Reading:
2 Kings 2.
In this chapter Elisha
comes into view in relation to the sons of the prophets.
They also are mentioned more than at any other time, and
on quite a number of occasions they are in evidence in
relation to him and his ministry. This has a significance
which we must look into, and we should seek the Lord's
help for an understanding of what this really means. Let
us refer to a few passages:
2 Kings
2:3, 5, 7, 14, 15-16; 4:38-41; 6:1-7.
The
Sons of the Prophets Who and What They Were
We have to go back to
the days of Samuel for our introduction to this
particular form of the prophetic ministry. Originally the
work which was afterward taken up by the prophets was
done by the priests. It was the priestly function to
instruct the people concerning the law and the ways of
God. But in the days of the Judges the priests became so
degenerated, and the priestly ministry fell to such a low
level, that it became well-nigh extinct, and altogether
inefficient and inadequate. Then Samuel came on the
scene, himself doubtless a priest. With him there came a
transition, and with him there came certain reforms. One
of these was the instituting of these schools of the
prophets, and we find reference made to one of them as
existing at Ramah, with Samuel at the head. You will read
about it in 1 Samuel 19.
We may say, what
perhaps is hardly necessary, that the term, "sons of
the prophets," must not be taken literally. It does
not mean that these were sons of prophets, but young men
of spiritual promise who were gathered together to be
prepared for spiritual ministry. That preparation was
along certain quite clearly defined lines, but mainly
with one object. They were to be very thoroughly
instructed and grounded in the law, especially the oral
law as differing from the symbolic law.
The priestly
instruction had been mainly along the lines of the
symbolic law; that is, the priests taught rather by
action than by word. What the priests DID was the
method of instruction originally. But that was symbolism
and type, and therefore the people had largely to have
discernment and perception. They had to be able to see
through a symbolic act to a Divine meaning. When things
were in a state of purity the people more or less
understood the meaning of those priestly activities; they
were able to see Divine thoughts as represented by
outward acts. When things degenerated, as in the years of
the Judges, spiritual perception and understanding almost
entirely disappeared.
What we have as to the
natural state of Eli typifies the spiritual state of the
people. His eyes had waxed dim, so that he was almost
entirely without sight, and he had become so weak, that
he had no power whatever to control even the moral life
of his own household. And that is a twofold
representation of the spiritual state of the people under
the priestly order at its end. Spiritual perception,
insight, had so far departed and ceased that moral
paralysis had set in, and government according to the
mind of God had practically disappeared. Therefore,
because spiritual insight and discernment (or what was
called in those days "vision") had disappeared,
a new form of instruction had become necessary, and that
was the oral form. The prophets were trained, not by the
symbolic or typical expression of the mind of God, but by
the direct declaration of it in word. So that it was the
oral law in which they were trained, to proclaim by word
of mouth, and not merely by symbolic act, what the mind
of the Lord was.
These schools of the
prophets were set up with a view to preparing men to
declare in a direct way the mind of God. There were other
things which were associated with that, such as the
spiritual history of their people, and of the world, from
the Divine standpoint. Read the prophecies of Isaiah and
Jeremiah, of Jonah, Haggai, and Daniel, and you will see
how much there is of history, direct or indirect, which
has been a studied thing. Daniel tells us he was made to
know by books, and he mentions in particular his study of
Jeremiah. He had come to a knowledge of things through
those prophecies, and when you look at Jeremiah, you find
that there is a good deal of history in his writing. So
that an additional object for which the schools of the
prophets came into being was the teaching of
"spiritual history."
Then there was a
further aspect of things bound up with these matters,
which we might call spiritual patriotism. We emphasize
the word "spiritual" since it indicates that
God had chosen a people; that God had separated a people;
that that people represented something for God in the
midst of the nations, and that God was jealous over them
because of what they represented for Him. Therefore the
prophets were on fire with a holy jealousy that that
people should fulfill its Divine vocation. That was the
nature of their spiritual patriotism. They were jealous
for Israel, because of Israel's Divine vocation. In the
schools of the prophets, that which we call
"spiritual patriotism" seems to have been
nurtured and cherished.
These were, shall we
say, incidental, subsidiary matters in the schools of the
prophets. The primary function was that which is the very
essence of prophetic ministry, that is, the revelation of
the mind of God by inspiration. Not revelation merely by
study, by the deductions of the human mind, but
revelation by inspiration; revealing the mind of God,
because the mind of God had been revealed by the Spirit
of God.
Thus the prophets stood
as the instrument of Divine representation, the means by
which God's thoughts, God's desires, God's will, should
not only be proclaimed, but represented. The prophet
should be not merely a spokesman, but the embodiment of
the truth to be spoken. So we find that the Lord took the
prophets through experiences in which the very message
entrusted to them was brought out in their own hearts, so
that they should be not only spokesmen, but living
representations of the truth.
That brings us back to
the schools of the prophets in Elisha's day, and we see
that they were for that purpose, to produce men who were
representatives of the Divine thought in a living way.
You have there the starting point for the relationship
between Elisha and these sons of the prophets.
There is this further
factor to be remembered that, so far as the sons of the
prophets were concerned as differing from the prophets,
they were in immaturity, and in a state of preparation;
hence the education which came by their relationship with
Elisha. You find in the passages to which we have
referred all the marks of immaturity in every case, and
see what was necessary to bring them to the place where
they could fulfill their prophetic ministry and serve
God.
That
Which Elisha Represents
We must remind
ourselves before going on of what Elisha stands for. He
represents the power of resurrection life, life
triumphant over death, the full issue of the Cross.
Elisha's roots were in Jordan; that is where he began. So
that what we expect to find is that in his connection
with these sons of the prophets in their immaturity they
are under instruction as to what is essential in their
ministry, and that that instruction is embodied in Elisha
himself; that is, that they will come to see that he has
the indispensable element for all ministry.
Take these first
references to the sons of the prophets in chapter 2, at
Bethel and at Jericho. They said: "Knowest thou that
the Lord will take away thy master from thy head
today?" Here we start with a very elementary thing,
perhaps almost too elementary to be mentioned, and yet
something which it may be necessary for one or another to
take account of. We notice that up to a point in this
chapter Elisha is not honored by these sons of the
prophets, but they address him in a somewhat frivolous
and flippant manner. He is regarded as a mere servant of
Elijah, so that whenever they see the great master moving
on, and Elisha with him, they thus flippantly say:
"Knowest thou that the Lord will take away thy
master from thy head to day?" He is simply the
servant of Elijah, and their attitude, their manner,
their speech, betrays some superiority in their thought
of themselves.
Here is spiritual pride
and conceit. They have little or no respect for this
layman. They are sons of the prophets: they are in the
way of the work of the Lord; they are "called to
service." They have about them an atmosphere of what
is official. This man has no office, other than recently
having come to follow the master, and wherever he goes
the servant goes. That conveys to them nothing of
spiritual meaning, so they regard him lightly. They have
no knowledge whatever of his secret history with God.
They have no perception at all as to what God was doing
with him, and thus they take this superior, perhaps
supercilious attitude.
That introduces what is
a very elementary factor, but it is not an uncommon thing
in the modern schools of the prophets. It is one of the
perils of the institution, of having had a
"call" to serve the Lord. Oh, the perils of a
"call'' to serve the Lord! Oh, the perils of a sense
of having been chosen by the Lord! the perils of being
mentally in a different category from those who have not
so heard the call and been chosen! One of the marks, if
not the hallmark, of spiritual immaturity is conceit, or
pride. No one who has any measure of spiritual growth and
development, is marked by spiritual pride. That is a very
challenging statement. There may be an enormous amount of
knowledge, all that the "schools" can impart,
not only the special colleges, but the general schools of
doctrine; there may be a very comprehensive grasp of the
teaching of the Scriptures, and accompanying it spiritual
pride and superiority, which regards others who have not
come that way, who have not been through those schools,
as something inferior. It does not matter how
comprehensive, how great such knowledge may be, if there
is a trace of that spiritual superiority, you may at once
decide that that is immaturity. That does not represent
any point of spiritual advance. Such people have yet to
learn from the beginning. Let us ask the Lord continually
to deliver us from spiritual pride, from superiority,
from conceit. The word "conceit" simply means
having the seat of things in yourself. We sometimes speak
of "having the root of the matter in you." That
phrase is used in rather a different sense. The opposite
of conceit is of having everything in the Lord, and
nothing in yourself; and that is spiritual growth.
The sons of the
prophets then do not come before us in a very good light,
but we must remember that they are in a state of
immaturity and preparation, and we must rather take our
warning from their example. God was doing something in
Elisha. God had His hand upon Elisha. There was an inner
history between Elisha and the Lord, and the Lord and
Elisha, which no one else could see. The official people
were entirely unable to discern that, therefore they
misunderstood. Let us be careful that we do not ride
roughshod over the exercises in other lives on the part
of the Lord which are not manifest at present outwardly,
because we think that we have something and are
something. We never know but what something very deep is
going on in a life which at present has not revealed
anything so far as we can see of what the Lord is doing.
It is so true that
anything in the nature of spiritual pride is a blinding
thing. It paralyzes the optic spiritually, so that any
kind of self-sufficiency makes it impossible for us to
see what God is doing elsewhere. We can never see that
the Lord is doing anything anywhere else, if we are so
self-satisfied that the Lord is really bound up with us,
and we are the beginning and the end of all the Lord's
interests. Pride blinds, and pride dulls spiritual
sensibilities. Elisha had good reason to feel very sore,
had he been a smaller man than he was, because of the
frivolous and flippant attitude of the sons of the
prophets. But he was a big man, and his dealings with
them later show that he bore no resentment. He really did
live out that which he represented, a life which has no
interests down here, but is a heavenly life, a life
above.
We pass on to chapter
2:7, after which follows Elijah's rapture, the mantle
falling, and Elisha smiting the waters of Jordan and
crying: "Where is the Lord God of Elijah?" the
waters parting hither and thither, and Elisha passing
through (2:14).
That brings us to
verses 15-16. Here you have an advance, a good movement.
There is now some recognition on the part of the sons of
the prophets of Elisha, and of what God has done with
him, and of the position in which God has placed him.
Remember that Elisha stands for the power of
resurrection, and although doubtless the sons of the
prophets would not have put it in these words or
understood it in this way, the spiritual explanation and
interpretation of their action is this, that they
recognized, accepted, and subjected themselves to the
absolute preeminence of the power of resurrection in
their lives. That is, they saw and they accepted that
this was to be the governing thing in their own case,
that for them all their life, their ministry, their
future, was to be under the sway of Christ in
resurrection. They were to fulfill their ministry in the
power of His resurrection; they were to be subject to the
risen Lord on the principle that resurrection life was to
govern. That is the spiritual interpretation. That is the
typical meaning of Elisha's position as here, and of the
sons of the prophets, recognizing and accepting and
subjecting themselves to that principle. But this is only
in a formal and outward way for the time being; that is,
what Elisha did really represent spiritually had not
become an inwrought thing in its meaning and value.
To bring that to
up-to-date experience and application, it simply means
this, that there does come a point when we are confronted
with a great fact, a comprehensive fact, a fact such as
this, that all life, all ministry from this time onward
has to be in the power of His resurrection, and in no
other power - under the absolute dominion, government,
control of the risen Lord in His risen life. That may be
presented to us, and we see it, observe it, take account
of it, and say, Yes, it is true, I recognize that that is
the truth; I accept that, I surrender to that, I subject
myself to that. We mean it. We cannot get away from it.
We cannot argue around it. The thing for us as a truth is
final. We are shut up to it. It is not a thing against
which we have any resentment. We see that it is God's way
for us, that God has appointed it, God means that. And in
a very honest, sincere way, like these sons of the
prophets, we bow to it, and we say to the great truth of
Christ risen, and of the government of His risen life
from henceforth: I submit myself to it, I yield myself to
it, I accept that; henceforth that is to be the
pre-eminent principle in my life.
That is where the sons
of the prophets came. That is where we come. And yet
there is all the difference between accepting a position
like that, and having its implications wrought into the
very substance of our being. We find that after this that
thing had to have a practical working into them, so as to
be made real in experience, and not only true in mind and
general acceptance.
There again we are
confronted with a challenge, because we are so often
brought up against the great facts and realities of God's
will, God's purpose, God's way, God's means, the thoughts
and desires of God as they affect our lives, and we find
ourselves shut up to it. It is as clear as it was to the
sons of the prophets that the spirit of Elijah did rest
upon Elisha; and seeing it thus, we bow to it, we accept
it, we say: We will to be subject to that henceforth.
That is very good! That is a good step! It is certainly a
very big step in advance of the position in which we
found these sons of the prophets earlier in the chapter.
But never let us think that the acceptance of a position
in our minds and in our hearts means that we have come to
the position. We may yet have some way to go before that
which we have accepted becomes a reality. All the
practical implications of that may yet have to be wrought
into us. The unfortunate thing with so many is that they
see the thing so clearly, it is so patent. There is no
argument, there is no question. It is true, it is final.
Then they go off thinking that because they are
convinced, even overwhelmed with the truth of it, that
they have it, and they begin to talk about it, and preach
it. They have seen something, but very often that thing
begins to break down in their lives. They find that,
while they embraced it with all their heart, the thing
was not true in their experience, and they begin to get
into trouble by the very thing that they have accepted.
And because they go through experiences which, from the
Divine standpoint, are intended to bring them
experimentally to that position, but for the time being
are so contrary to it, they very often say: "Well,
this thing does not work. I was certain that it was
right; there was no question in my mind about it, and
even now I do not see anything else; but, so far as I am
concerned, it does not work." And they get into
confusion and contradiction, and then they abandon the
whole thing. Others hold on in the midst of the mystery,
and go through with God to a clear place.
It is as clear as
anything can be that these sons of the prophets accepted
something in a comprehensive way, and their acceptance
was very genuine, but that did not mean that the
implications had been wrought into their hearts. From the
standpoint of God there has to be an acceptance like
that; full, complete, honest, final: but then the Lord
begins to apply that.
It is most significant,
from the standpoint of spiritual history, that there is
no break whatever between their acceptance of Elisha,
their bowing to him, and then their beginning to argue
with him, as you will see from verses 16 to 18. That is a
contradiction of subjection, a denial of their accepting
him as the governing principle of their lives.
Immediately it is found that what has been in all honesty
an accepted thing is not yet a thing which is a part of
their being. Do you notice what is involved? If Elisha is
the power of life triumphant over death, then he is up
against features of death all the time, and this incident
affords one example of making room for death by these
sons of the prophets. Elijah had been taken by a
whirlwind into heaven, and they argued: "...lest
peradventure the spirit of the Lord hath taken him up,
and cast him upon some mountain, or into some
valley," making room for something far less than the
utter and the ultimate thing. It is as though they said:
"Well, after all, he may be lying dead
somewhere."
There is a large scope
for contemplation there, if we bring the matter into the
realm of the New Testament, as to our failing to grasp
the reality of Christ in heaven, the meaning of the Lord
Jesus being at the right hand of God, and our falling
below that, and all the death that is let in by such a
failure to grasp, to apprehend its full value. But it is
not our intention to explore that realm. We only mention
it because there is a very big factor involved.
We keep to the simple
line for our present purpose, pointing out, that here
there was a making room for death by acting on the level
of natural reason in spiritual things. Here was a great
spiritual factor, which was embodied in the very man
standing before these sons of the prophets. Elisha would
never have been there as he was in that capacity, with
that enduement, if Elijah had not gone into heaven. They
were in the presence of the fact of the power of
resurrection, and yet they must handle such spiritual
magnitudes with the natural mind, and drag it down from
its high level of heavenly reality on to the low level of
human reasoning. They must verify spiritual things by
their own natural minds.
That brings us back to
Romans 8:6, "For the mind of the flesh is
death..." These men were, after all, dwelling
mentally in the realm of death, not in glory, ascension,
rapture. They were not in the heavenlies in spirit. They
were mentally dwelling in the realm of death. "Lest
peradventure the spirit of the Lord hath taken him up,
and cast him upon some mountain, or into some
valley." That was their horizon, that was the realm
in which they were living and thinking. And it was simply
death, because it was the mind of the flesh.
We pass from Romans to
Corinthians: "Now the natural man receiveth not the
things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness
unto him; and he cannot know them, because they are
spiritually judged." That is death: and when we try
to handle, analyze, pierce through heavenly and spiritual
things with these minds of ours, this natural reasoning,
we come to a deadlock, we come to an impasse, and we move
in a realm of spiritual death.
These very men had seen
what happened. They saw Jordan cleft; they had knowledge
of the risen and ascended Lord, but they were not taking
their own position in an experimental way upon it. They
wanted to have a certain confirmation in the realm of
sense. Oh! how the natural man longs to get confirmation
through his senses. He longs to see something, feel
something, to have evidences. Beloved, one of the marks
of resurrection is that so often the whole thing goes on
without any evidences in the realm of our senses. Do you
think that the people who live in the power of His
resurrection are always conscious of being simply
overflowing with Divine life? Very often, like Paul, they
feel as dead as anything can be in themselves, and yet
the miracle is that there is that which is not of
themselves enabling them unto the work, carrying them on.
They are conscious of weakness, emptiness, dependence,
and yet there is something of God which carries them on.
If they were to stand still and say: "I am not going
on any longer until I know in every part of my being, and
in every factor of my life, the overflowing of His
resurrection," they would not go on. The Lord does
not meet us on that ground at all. These men showed
immaturity by wanting evidences in the realm of the
senses. Elisha shows how utterly he represents the
principle of resurrection life by standing against all
that is merely sentient. The flesh must have its proofs,
and its evidences along its own line, but the spirit sees
through and acts in another realm: "That which is
born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the
Spirit is spirit" (John 3:6).
So these sons of the
prophets sought to take hold of resurrection life and
draw it down to the limitations of man's doubts. If you
and I do that, we shall fall out of the realm of that
ministry and testimony to which the Lord calls us. It is
a very great temptation all the way along to want
evidences of the spiritual in the realm of our feelings
and of our natural knowledge, instead of going on and
knowing quite well that the going on is not by our own
power; that it is impossible so far as we are concerned,
and yet we are going on by reason of Him Who is our life.
Looked at naturally,
all those who have known and lived on the principle of
the risen life of the Lord Jesus would appear a very poor
lot indeed. If you could gather all the men and the women
of this New Testament dispensation who have lived wholly
upon that principle of life triumphant over death, and
you looked at them as men look at people, you would say:
"That is a poor crowd." Take Paul! Some people
would get a big surprise if they could see Paul as he
was. We have all the romance of nearly two thousand years
of the effect of Paul's ministry. We have all this volume
of literature on Paul, his life, and letters, and work.
If Paul were able to meet us as he was then, and we had
no spiritual perception, but simply saw him as a man, we
should say: "Is this the man who created all this
literature, and caused all this talk, who has stirred the
world to its very depths for nearly two thousand years? I
do not see anything in him!" But there is a deeper
side. So you ask him: "Paul, did you know all the
way through your life, when you were in this great work,
such resurrection power that you never had an ache or a
pain, and never felt tired, and never knew what it was to
be depressed, to feel fears, to be anxious?" He
would answer: "I knew them all as few men have known
them, fightings without and fears within. I knew what
depression was; I knew what it was to be tempted to
doubt; I knew what it was to go through dark patches
where ultimate questions arose; I knew what it was to
despair of life." We may take it that there were
many, many occasions when Paul was not conscious
pre-eminently of the power of His resurrection, and yet
he was living on it, and that accounted for everything.
That which is real and
that of which we are conscious may be two different
things. All that we know at times is that we go on in
spite of ourselves. What is it that carries us on? It is
that other "something" that is deeper than
thought, deeper than understanding, deeper than feeling;
it is the Lord going on in us.
The sons of the
prophets made room for death by opening the door for
human evidence, proof through the senses. That is
spiritual immaturity. They will never graduate to the
full prophetic ministry, until that which is true of
Elisha has become true of them. Let us recognize that if
Elisha comes out of Jordan, has his roots in Calvary,
and, therefore, is the embodiment of the meaning of the
Cross, then for these sons of the prophets, and
spiritually for us, he points to the absolute necessity
for the natural mind going to the Cross before ever we
can know the risen life in Christ. They would seek to be
justified by their works, and so they scoured the
mountains and the valleys. They would have been justified
if they had taken the spiritual position and believed.
Turn to chapter
4:38-41. Here we see that these sons of the prophets went
out to gather herbs for a meal, and when they found some
wild gourds and cast them into the pot, it almost meant
disaster. The lesson is a simple and clear one. It is
again the coming in of the element of death:
"...there is death in the pot." Death comes in
here amongst the sons of the prophets along the line of a
lack of discrimination in what was suitable to the
maintaining of the spiritual life. There is a dearth in
the land, the very life of the Lord's people is
endangered, imperiled. And so that which is necessary for
the sustenance and maintenance of life is the primary
issue. These men (note again) are in preparation for
spiritual ministry, and one thing which will most
certainly arise in their ministry, and a primary thing,
will be the question of what is suitable for the
spiritual life of the people of God. And the one thing
that they will need in the fulfillment of that ministry
is to have discrimination. Moreover, they are going to
fulfill their ministry in times of sore need and
pressure; for the prophets came up, as we have seen, in
connection with the state of spiritual declension.
Prophetic ministry is to be exercised mainly in times
when the order of God in its fullness and clearness is
not obtaining, when things have swung away from the
Lord's full thought, and the glory of the heavenly order
is no longer existent. There will be, therefore, pressure
and difficulty in the times when the prophets fulfill
their ministry. The people will be in a state of great
spiritual need, and the prophets will have to be in a
position to say what it is that is suited to that need.
Pass your eye forward,
and you will see the clash between the true and the false
prophet. Certain false prophets prophesied the things
which were pleasing for popularity's sake; things that
they were expected to say; things that they would get
reward for saying. And so they prophesied smooth things,
and these things were death. The true prophet had to
withstand the false, and prophesy the things which very
often were not popular and acceptable. These sons of the
prophets were preparing for their spiritual ministry, and
that ministry was to be the ministry of life triumphant
over death. And a great factor in such ministry is
ability to discriminate between what is of life and what
is of death, what is living and what is dead.
In this incident in the
fourth chapter they go through a practical experience.
They gather for their sustenance in a day of pressure,
but they gather indiscriminately, and find that death is
in the pot. When such a state exists, and there is
pressure, it is so easy to mix things up. It is so easy
to bring along something which really is not life because
it looks all right. The devil is taking advantage of a
time of spiritual famine today to get into the pot things
that are poisonous and deadly. There is a great need
today amongst the Lord's people. There is a dearth of
real spiritual food, and with it a sense of need. The
enemy is taking advantage of that sense of need, and
unfortunately it is those instruments which have no
spiritual discernment who are bringing in the thing which
is deadly to the Lord's people. One of the marks of our
day is a lack of discernment and perception, an
incapacity for discriminating between the true and the
false, when the false looks like the true. Wild grapes
and wild gourds look so much alike. You can be easily
deceived by appearances, and so they are all put in
together. And today you notice the mixture of the false
and the true, and that is the deadly element. There is
the true there, but there is something else mixed in, and
in the long run it is proved to be not life as it
promised to be, but death, a deadly deception, a deadly
contradiction, a deadly denial.
The whole point is that
of the absolute necessity of spiritual understanding, by
which spiritual discrimination is made as to what is
suitable to a true spiritual life, and what is not
suitable. You cannot feed what is of God upon something
which is of man or of the world. It is unsuitable. That
which is of God is a species which cannot thrive upon
anything else but that which is of Him. If you feed it on
anything else you introduce poison. We cannot live the
risen life of the Lord upon anything other than what is
of the Lord, and so Elisha cast meal into the pot. And
what is the meal if it is not the Lord Jesus, the meal
offering to God, God's absolute satisfaction with Christ?
Prophets must always know what really is living food for
the people of God. The sustenance of the Lord's people is
by the impartation of Christ in His moral and spiritual
excellencies.
Finally, in chapter 6,
verses 1-7: "The place where we dwell with thee is
too strait for us." The desire for extending the
house may be quite a good one, we have nothing to say
about that. The sons of the prophets take their axes and
go down to obtain energetically the means for that
extension. They enter upon a course of action for
enlarging the house. And as they are felling the trees
one man's axe-head comes off and falls into the water -
the river Jordan. That is a calamity, but there are
always lessons hidden in calamities. The elements here
are those of energy, and the energy is represented by the
axe. An axe is an energetic symbol. It speaks of strength
in action. But this man who is the occasion of the story
has a loose axe-head. His strength, his energy, is of an
uncertain quantity and quality, and it fails to get
through; it breaks down on the way. The parable is
perfectly clear; we hardly need apply it. Here is good
purpose, good intention, good motive, the object is quite
commendable, but the initiative is with the man, and the
energy is of man: and man's energy in the things of God
is a very uncertain quantity, and sooner or later it will
break down, and a state of death will exist, because that
axe-head is at the bottom of Jordan.
May we stay for a
moment and recall a further reference to the axe-head in
another part of the Scripture. You will remember that the
cities of refuge were appointed for the benefit of such
as accidentally killed another man, and this illustration
is given: The case is supposed of two men who went one
day into the woods to cut down trees, and one man's
axe-head came off and smote the other man, that he died.
It is interesting that that is cited as an illustration
of how a man may die accidentally. The city of refuge was
provided for him who caused the death, that the avenger
of blood should not take his life for the life of the one
who has died. But we must remember that there is a
certain responsibility for seeing that your axe-head is
not loose. It is all very well to say that it was an
accident, but what about the responsibility for seeing
before you started that the head was on the axe securely?
There is a moral principle involved there.
Here is a man who
started out with a borrowed axe, and he never looked to
see whether his axe-head was perfectly safe. That loose
axe-head instead of going into the Jordan might have gone
into another man's head, and the question of death would
have been involved. In principle it is the same thing.
Morally it is one thing. The axe-head is at the bottom of
Jordan, and typically a state of death has come about
because of an attempt - spiritually interpreted - to do
spiritual things with natural energies.
We need say no more,
other than to conclude the incident. The axe-head came
back, and the work was finished, though now in the power
of resurrection. But for Elisha being on the spot as the
power of resurrection, as that which had conquered Jordan
already, as that which had triumphed over death as
represented by Jordan, that was the end of that man's
work.
There are other
features, but we will not touch upon them. We are simply
taking what seems to be the heart of these things.
So we are brought to
the fact that preparation for full usefulness to the Lord
in the power of resurrection means that we have to go
through an experience where our energies are brought to
an end, where the strength of the flesh is buried in
Jordan, and where we can only go on because we discover
the power of His resurrection.
With the seeking for
the body of Elijah you have the natural mind at work. In
the seeking for the food you have the natural heart at
work. In the loss of the axe-head you have the natural
will at work. Mind, heart and will, all having to pass
through death, to come into the realm of the power of His
resurrection.
So that Elisha's
connection with the sons of the prophets is full of
illumination. We shall miss the mark, if we just dwell
with the typology. We simply use it, in order to get to
the spiritual side of things. It would be quite easy for
us to go to the New Testament and see this principle, and
that principle, and the other principle laid down, but
that would be but a statement made. We have preferred to
go to the Old Testament and illustrate principles. The
principles are in the New Testament as clearly as
anything can be: for example, that the Cross does mean
the end of the natural mind, so far as spiritual things
are concerned: the Cross does mean that "they that
are Christ's have crucified the flesh and the affections
and desires thereof": the Cross does mean that the
strength of "I" has to be crucified with
Christ. But the Cross does mean also that in mind, heart,
and will, the power of His resurrection has to be
established, and can be.
While these sons of the
prophets accepted the position in the beginning, it was
only wrought into them stage by stage through experience,
and each of those stages was simply the making real in
them of the implications of their relationship to Elisha,
what was bound up with him as being their head, their
governing law of life.
We go through
experiences to bring us there, but as we go through them
we come to the place where we do know Him, and the power
of His resurrection.
The Lord teach us
more fully what this means.