The Chariots of Fire
2 Kings 2:1-11
Elijah’s end is in keeping with his
career. From his first abrupt appearance it had been fitly symbolised by the
stormy wind and flaming fire which he heard and saw at Horeb, and now these
were to be the vehicles which should sweep him into the heavens. He came
like a whirlwind, he burned like a fire, and in fire and whirlwind he
disappeared. The story is wonderful in pathos and simplicity. Surely never
was such a miracle told so quietly. The actual ascension is narrated in a
sentence. Its preliminaries take up the rest of this narrative.
I. This journey from Gilgal to the
eastern side of Jordan is minutely described in its stages.
Apparently this Gilgal is not the
well-known place so called, which was down in the Jordan valley close to
Jericho, else the road from it to Bethel could not have been called a going
down ( v. 2 ). It probably lay to the north of Bethel, which would then be
between it and Jericho, where the Jordan was to be passed. Elijah was not
sent on an aimless round of farewell visits, but by the direct road to his
destination. Note that he and Elisha and the ‘sons of the prophets’ all know
that he is near his end. How this came about we are not told, and need not
speculate; but though all knew, none seems to have known that the others
knew. Elijah does not explain to Elisha why he wished him to stay behind,
nor Elisha to Elijah why he was so resolved to keep by him. The knowledge
and the silence would give peculiar solemnity and sweet bitterness to these
last hours. How often a similar combination weighs on the hearts of a
household, who all know that a dear one is soon to be taken away, and yet
can only be silent about what is uppermost in their thoughts!
Why did Elijah wish Elisha to stay
behind? Apparently to spare him the pain of seeing his master depart. With
loving concealment, he tried to make Elisha suppose that his errand to
Bethel and then to Jericho was but a common one, to be soon despatched. It
was a little touch of tenderness in the strong, rough man. Note, too, the
gradual disclosure to Elijah of the places to which he was to go. He is only
bid to go to Bethel, and not till he gets there is he further sent on to
Jericho, and, presumably, only when there is directed to cross Jordan. God
does not show all the road at once, even if it lead to glory, but step by
step, and a second stage only when we have obediently traversed the first.
We get light as we go. Elisha’s clinging to his master till the very last is
but too intelligible to many of us who have gone through the same sorrow,
and counted each moment of companionship with some dear one about to leave
earth as priceless gain, to be treasured in the sacredest recesses of memory
for evermore.
It has been thought that the object of
the visits to Bethel and Jericho was to give parting directions to the
schools of the prophets at each place; but that is read into the narrative,
which gives no hint that Elijah had any communication with these. Rather the
contrary is implied, both in the fact that the ‘sons of the prophets’ came
to the travellers, not the travellers to them, and in their addressing
Elisha, as if some awe of the master kept them from speaking to him. An
Elijah marching to his chariot of fire was not a man for raw youths to
approach lightly. Their question is met by Elisha with curtness and scant
courtesy, which indicates that it was asked in no sympathetic spirit, but
from mere love of telling bad news, and of vulgar excitement. Even the
gentle Elisha is stirred to rebuke the gossiping chatterers, who intrude
their curiosity into that sacred hour. There are abundance of such
busy-bodies always ready to buzz about any bleeding heart, and sorrow has
often to be stern in order to be unmolested.
II. The second stage is the passage
of Jordan.
The verbal repetition of the same
dialogue at Jericho as at Bethel increases the impression of prolonged
loving struggle between the two prophets. At last, they stand on the western
bank of Jordan, at their feet the spot where the hurrying river had been
stayed by the ark till the tribes had passed over, before them the mountains
bordering Elijah’s homeland of Gilead on the left, and away on the right the
lone peak where Moses had died ‘by the mouth of the Lord.’ The soil was
redolent of the miracles of the Mosaic age, and the dividing of the waters
by Elijah is meant to bring the present into vital connection with that
past, and to designate him as parallel with the former leader. Note the
vigour with which he twists his characteristic mantle into a kind of rod,
and strikes the waters strongly. The repetition of the former miracle is a
sign that the unexhausted Power which wrought it is with Elijah. The God of
yesterday is the God of to-day, and nothing that was done in the past but
will be repeated in essence, though not in form, in the present. ‘As we have
heard so have we seen.’ The former miracle had been done for a nation; this
is performed for two men. It teaches the preciousness of His individual
servants in God’s eyes. The former had been done through the ark; this, by
the prophet’s mantle. Power is lodged in the faithful messenger. God’s
strength dwells in those who love Him. The former miracle had been the close
of the desert wanderings and the gateway to Canaan. Though Elijah’s face is
turned in the opposite direction, does not its repetition suggest that for
him, too, the impending translation was to be the end of wilderness
weariness and toil, and the entrance on rest?
III. Elisha’s request is the next
stage in the story.
How far they two ‘went on’ is not
told. The Bible does not foster the craving to know the exact situation
where sacred things happened, the gratification of which might feed
superstition, but could not increase reverence. Possibly they had drawn near
the eastern hills, and were out of sight of the fifty curious gazers on the
other hank. Elijah at last spoke the truth which both knew. How true to
nature is that reticence kept up till the last moment, and then broken so
tenderly!—‘Ask what I shall do for thee, before.’ Probably he did not mean
any supernatural gift, but simply some parting token of love; for he is
startled at the response of Elisha. A true disciple can desire nothing more
than a portion of his master’s spirit. ‘It is enough for the disciple that
he be as his Master.’ They covet wisely and with a noble covetousness who
most desire spiritual gifts to fit them for their vocation. It was an
unworldly soul which asked but for such a legacy.
The ‘double portion’ does not mean
twice as much as Elijah’s portion had been, but twice as much as other ‘sons
of the prophets’ would receive. Elisha reckoned himself Elijah’s first-born
spiritual son, and asked for the elder brother’s share, because he had been
designated as successor, and would require more than others for his work.
The new sense of responsibility is coming on him, and teaching him his need.
Well for us if higher positions make us lowlier, in the consciousness of our
own unfitness without divine help! Elijah knows that his spirit was not his
to give, and can only refer his successor to the Fountain from which he had
drawn; for the sign which he gives is obviously not within his power to
determine. If the Lord shows the ascending master to him who is left, He
will give the servant his desire.
A portion of their ‘spirit’ is the
very thing which teachers and prophets cannot give. They may give their
systems or their methods, their favourite ideas or cut-and-dry maxims and
principles, and so leave a race of pygmies who give themselves airs as being
their disciples, but their spirit they cannot impart. Contrast with this
limitation of power confessed by Elijah, His consciousness who breathed on
eleven poor men, and said, ‘Receive ye the Holy Ghost.’ No man could say
that without absurdity or blasphemy. The gift impossible to man is the very
characteristic gift of Jesus, who ‘has power over the Spirit of holiness.’
Must He not thereby be ‘declared to be the Son of God’?
IV. The climax of this lesson is that
stupendous scene of the translation. Note how the ‘Behold’ suggests the
suddenness of the appearance of the fiery chariot, which came flaming
between the two men eagerly talking, and drove them apart. The description
of the departure, in its brevity and incompleteness, sounds like the report
of the only eye-witness, who had the fiery chariot between him and Elijah,
and was too bewildered to see precisely what happened. All he knew was the
sudden appearance of the fiery equipage, and then that, suddenly, and
apparently swiftly, a rushing mighty wind swept away chariot and prophet
into the heavens. He saw it, as the next verse after this passage tells us,
only long enough to break into one rapturous and yet lamenting cry, and then
all vanished, and he stood alone with an apparently empty heaven above him,
the whirlwind sunk to calm, and Elijah’s mantle at his feet.
The teaching of the event is plain. As
for the pre-Mosaic ages the translation of Enoch, and for the earlier Mosaic
epoch the mysterious death of Moses, so for the prophetic period the
carrying to heaven of Elijah, witnessed of a life beyond death, and of death
as the wages of sin, which God could remit, if He willed, in the case of
faithful service. Enoch and Elijah were led round the head of the valley on
the heights, and reached the other side without having to go down into the
cold waters flowing in the bottom; and though we cannot tread their path,
the joy of their experience has not ceased to be a joy to us, if we walk
with God. Death is still the coming of the chariot and horses of fire to
bear the believer home. The same exclamation which fell from Elisha’s lips,
as he saw the chariot sweep up the sky, was spoken over him as he lay sick
‘of the sickness whereof he should die.’
But the most instructive view of
Elijah’s translation is its parallel and contrast with Christ’s Ascension.
The one was by outward means; the other by inward energy. Storm and fire
bore Elijah up into a region strange to him. Christ ‘ascended up where He
was before,’ returning by the propriety of His nature to His eternal
dwelling-place. The one is accomplished with significant disturbance, of
whirlwind and flame; the other is gentle, like the life which it closed, and
the last sight of Him was with extended hands of blessing. Each life closed
in a manner corresponding to its character. The one was swift and sudden.
The other was a slow, solemn motion, vividly described as being ‘borne
upwards’ and as ‘going into heaven.’ The one bore a mortal into ‘heaven.’ In
the other, the Son of God, our great High Priest, ‘hath passed through the
heavens,’ and now, far above them all, He is ‘Head over all things.’
The Translation of Elijah and the
Ascension of Christ
2 Kings 2:11
‘And it came to pass, as they still
went on, and talked, that, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and
horses of fire, and parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a
whirlwind into heaven.’— 2 KINGS 2:11
‘And it came to pass, while He blessed
them, He was parted from them, and carried up into heaven.’— LUKE 24:51 .
These two events, the translation of
Elijah and the Ascension of our Lord, have sometimes been put side by side
in order to show that the latter narrative is nothing but a ‘variant’ of the
former. See, it is said, the source of your New Testament story is only the
old legend shaped anew by the wistful regrets of the early disciples. But to
me it seems that the simple comparison of the two narratives is sufficient
to bring out such fundamental difference in the ideas which they
respectively embody as amount to opposition, and make any such theory of the
origin of the latter absurdly improbable, I could wish no better foil for
the history of the Ascension than the history of Elijah’s rapture. The
comparison brings out contrasts at every step, and there is no readier way
of throwing into strong relief the meaning and purpose of the former, than
holding up beside it the story of the latter. The real parallel makes the
divergences the more remarkable, for likeness sharpens our perception of
unlikeness, and no contrast is so forcible as the contrast of things that
correspond. I am much mistaken if we shall not find almost every truth of
importance connected with our Lord’s Ascension emphasised for us by the
comparison to which we now proceed.
I. The first point which may be
mentioned is the contrast between the manner of Elijah’s translation, and
that of our Lord’s Ascension.
It is perhaps not without significance
that the place of the one event was on the uplands or in some of the rocky
gorges beyond Jordan, and that of the other, the slopes of Olivet above
Bethany. The lonely prophet, who had burst like a meteor on Israel from the
solitudes of Gilead, whose fervour had ever and again been rekindled by
return to the wilderness, whose whole career had isolated him from men,
found the fitting place for that last wonder amidst the stern silence where
he had so often sought asylum and inspiration. He was close to the scenes of
mighty events in the past. There, on that overhanging peak, the lawgiver
whose work he was continuing, and with whom he was to be so strangely
associated on the Mount of Transfiguration, had made himself ready for his
lonely grave. Here at his feet, the river had parted for the victorious
march of Israel. Away down on his horizon the sunshine gleamed on the waters
of the Dead Sea; and thus, on his native soil, surrounded by memorials of
the Law which he laboured to restore, and of the victories which he would
fain have brought back, and of the judgments which he saw again impending
over Israel, the stern, solitary ascetic, the prophet of righteousness,
whose single arm stayed the downward course of a nation, passed from his
toil and his warfare.
What a different set of associations
cluster round the place of Christ’s Ascension—‘Bethany,’ or, as it is more
particularly specified in the Acts, ‘Olivet’! In the very heart of the land,
close by and yet out of sight of the great city, in no wild solitude, but
perhaps in some dimple of the hill, neither shunning nor courting
spectators, with the quiet home where He had rested so often in the little
village at their feet there, and Gethsemane a few furlongs off, in such
scenes did the Christ ‘whose delights were with the sons of men,’ and His
life lived in closest companionship with His brethren, choose the place
whence He should ‘ascend to their Father and His Father.’ Nor perhaps was it
without a meaning that the Mount which received the last print of His
ascending footstep was that which a mysterious prophecy designated as
destined to receive the first print of the footstep of the Lord coming at a
future day to end the long warfare with evil.
But more important than the localities is the contrasted manner of the two
ascents. The prophet’s end was like the man. It was fitting that he should
be swept up the skies in tempest and fire. The impetuosity of his nature,
and the stormy energy of his career, had already been symbolised in the
mighty and strong wind which rent the rocks, and in the fire that followed
the earthquake; and similarly nothing could be more appropriate than that
sudden rapture in storm and whirlwind, escorted by the flaming chivalry of
heaven.
Nor is it only as appropriate to the
character of the prophet and his work that this tempestuous translation is
noteworthy. It also suggests very plainly that Elijah was lifted to the
skies by power acting on him from without. He did not ascend; he was carried
up; the earthly frame and the human nature had no power to rise. ‘No man
hath ascended into heaven.’ The two men of whom the Old Testament speaks
were alike in this, that ‘God took them.’ The tempest and the fiery chariot
tell us how great was the exercise of divine power which bore the gross
mortality thither, and how unfamiliar was the sphere into which it passed.
How full of the very spirit of
Christ’s whole life is the contrasted manner of His Ascension! The silent
gentleness, which did not strive nor cry nor cause His voice to be heard in
the streets, marks Him even in that hour of lofty and transcendent triumph.
There is no outward sign to accompany His slow upward movement through the
quiet air. No blaze of fiery chariots, nor agitation of tempest is needed to
bear Him heavenwards. The outstretched hands drop the dew of His benediction
on the little company, and so He floats upward, His own will and indwelling
power the royal chariot which bears Him, and calmly ‘leaves the world and
goes unto the Father.’ The slow, continuous movement of ascent is
emphatically made prominent in the brief narratives, both by the phrase in
Luke, ‘He was carried up,’ which expresses continuous leisurely motion, and
by the picture in the Acts, of the disciples gazing into heaven ‘as He went
up,’ in which latter word is brought out, not only the slowness of the
movement, but its origin in His own will and its execution by His own power.
Nor is this absence of any vehicle or
external agency destroyed by the fact that ‘a cloud’ received Him out of
their sight, for its purpose was not to raise Him heavenward, but to hide
Him from the gazers’ eyes, that He might not seem to them to dwindle into
distance, but that their last look and memory might be of His clearly
discerned and loving face. Possibly, too, it may be intended to remind us of
the cloud which guided Israel, the glory which dwelt between the cherubim,
the cloud which overshadowed the Mount of Transfiguration, and to set forth
a symbol of the Divine Presence welcoming to itself, His battle fought, the
Son of His love.
Be that as it may, the manner of our
Lord’s Ascension by His own inherent power is brought into boldest relief
when contrasted with Elijah’s rapture, and is evidently the fitting
expression, as it is the consequence, of His sole and singular divine
nature. It accords with His own mode of reference to the Ascension, while He
was on earth, which ever represents Him not as being taken , but as going :
‘I leave the world and go to the Father.’ ‘I ascend to My Father and your
Father.’ The highest hope of the devoutest souls before Him had been, ‘Thou
wilt afterwards take me to glory.’ The highest hope of devout souls since
Him has been, ‘We shall be caught up to meet the Lord.’ But this Man ever
speaks of Himself as able when He will, by His own power, to rise where no
man hath ascended. His divine nature and pre-existence shine clearly forth,
and as we stand gazing at Him blessing the world as He rises into the
heavens, we know that we are looking on no mere mysterious elevation of a
mortal to the skies, but are beholding the return of the Incarnate Lord, who
willed to tarry among our earthly tabernacles for a time, to the glory where
He was before, ‘His own calm home, His habitation from eternity.’
II. Another striking point of
contrast embraces the relation which these two events respectively bear to
the life’s work which had preceded them.
The falling mantle of Elijah has
become a symbol known to all the world, for the transference of unfinished
tasks and the appointment of successors to departed greatness. Elisha asked
that he might have a double portion of his master’s spirit, not meaning
twice as much as his master had had, but the eldest son’s share of the
father’s possessions, the double of the other children’s portion. And,
though his master had no power to bestow the gift, and had to reply as one
who has nothing that he has not received, and cannot dispose of the grace
that dwells in him, the prayer was answered, and the feebler nature of
Elisha was fitted for the continuance of the work which Elijah left undone.
The mantle that passed from one to the
other was the symbol of office and authority transferred; the functions were
the same, whilst the holders had changed. The sons of the prophets bow
before the new master; ‘the spirit of Elijah doth rest on Elisha.’
So the world goes on. Man after man
serves his generation by the will of God, and is gathered to his fathers;
and a new arm grasps the mantle to smite Jordan, and a new voice speaks from
his empty place, and men recognise the successor, and forget the
predecessor.
We turn to Christ’s Ascension, and
there we meet with nothing analogous to this transference of office. No
mantle falling from His shoulders lights on any of that group, none are
hailed as His successors. What He has done bears and needs no repetition
whilst time shall roll, whilst eternity shall last. His work is unique: ‘the
help that is done on earth, He doeth it all Himself.’ His Ascension
completed the witness of heaven, begun at His resurrection, that ‘He has
offered one sacrifice for sins, for ever.’ He has left no unfinished work
which another may perfect. He has done no work which another may do again
for new generations. He has spoken all truth, and none may add to His words.
He has fulfilled all righteousness, and none may better His pattern. He has
borne all the world’s sin, and no time can waste the power of that
sacrifice, nor any man add to its absolute sufficiency. This King of men
wears a crown to which there is no heir. This Priest has a priesthood which
passes to no other. This ‘Prophet’ does ‘live for ever,’ The world sees all
other guides and helpers pass away, and every man’s work is caught up by
other hands and carried on after he drops it, and the short memories and
shorter gratitudes of men turn to the rising sun; but one Name remains
undimmed by distance, and one work remains unapproached and unapproachable,
and one Man remains whose office none other can hold, whose bow none but He
can bend, whose mantle none can wear. Christ has ascended up on high and
left a finished work for all men to trust, for no man to continue.
III. Whilst our Lord’s Ascension is
thus marked as the seal of a work in which He has no successor, it is also
emphatically set forth, by contrast with Elijah’s translation, as the
transition to a continuous energy for and in the world.
Clearly the other narrative derives
all its pathos from the thought that Elijah’s work is done. His task is
over, and nothing more is to be hoped for from him. But that same absence
from the history of Christ’s Ascension, of any hint of a successor, to which
we have referred in the previous remarks, has an obvious bearing on His
present relation to the world as well as on the completeness of His unique
past work.
When Christ ascended up on high, He
relinquished nothing of His activity for us, but only cast it into a new
form, which in some sense is yet higher than that which it took on earth.
His work for the world is in one aspect completed on the Cross, but in
another it will never be completed until all the blessings which that Cross
has lodged in the midst of humanity, have reached their widest possible
diffusion and their highest possible development. Long ages ago He cried,
‘It is finished,’ but we may be far yet from the time when He shall say, ‘It
is done’; and for all the slow years between His own word gives us the law
of His activity, ‘My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.’
Christ’s Ascension is no withdrawal of
the Captain of our salvation from the field where we are left to fight, nor
has He gone up to the mountain, leaving us alone to tug at the oar, and
shiver in the cold night air. True, there may seem a strange contrast
between the present condition of the Lord who ‘was received up into heaven,
and sitteth on the right hand of God,’ and that of the servants wandering
through the world on His business; but the contrast is harmonised by the
next words, ‘the Lord also working with them.’ Yes, He has gone up to sit at
the right hand of God. That session at God’s right hand to which the
Ascension is chiefly of importance as the transition, means the repose of a
perfected redemption, the communion of the Son with the Father, the exercise
of all the omnipotence of God, the administration of the world’s history. He
has ascended that He might fill all things, that He might pour out His
Spirit upon us, that the path to God may be trodden by our lame feet, that
the whole resources of the divine nature may be wielded by the hands that
were nailed to the Cross, that the mighty purpose of salvation may be
fulfilled.
Elijah knew not whether his spirit
could descend upon his follower. But Christ, though, as we have said, He
left no legacy of falling mantle to any, left His Spirit to His people. What
Elisha gained, Elijah lost. What Elisha desired, Elijah could not give nor
guarantee. How firm and assured beside Elijah’s dubious ‘Thou hast asked a
hard thing,’ and his ‘If thou see me, it shall be so,’ is Christ’s ‘It is
expedient for you that I go away. For if I go not away the Comforter will
not come, but if I depart, I will send Him unto you.’
Manifold are the forms of that new and continuous activity of Christ into
which He passed when He left the earth: and as we contrast these with the
utter helplessness any longer to counsel, rebuke or save, to which death
reduces those who love us best, and to which even his glorious rapture into
the heavens brought the strong prophet of fire, we can take up, with a new
depth of meaning, the ancient words that tell of Christ’s exclusive
prerogative of succouring and inspiring from within the veil: ‘Thou hast
ascended on high; Thou hast led captivity captive; Thou hast received gifts
for men.’
IV. The Ascension of Christ is
still further set forth, in its very circumstances, by contrast with
Elijah’s translation, as bearing on the hopes of humanity for the future.
The prophet is caught up to the glory
and repose for himself alone, and the sole share which the gazing follower
or the sons of the prophets straining their eyes there at Jericho, had in
his triumph, was a deepened conviction of his prophetic mission, and perhaps
some clearer faith in a future life. Their wonder and sorrow, Elisha’s
immediate exercise of his new power, the prophets’ immediate transference of
their allegiance to their new head, show that on both sides it was felt that
they had no part in the event beyond that of awe-struck beholders. No light
streamed from it on their own future. The path they had to tread was still
the common road into the great darkness, as solitary and unknown as before.
The chariot of fire parted their master from the common experience of
humanity as from their fellowship, making him an exception to the sad rule
of death, which frowned the grimmer and more inexorable by contrast with his
radiant translation.
The very reverse is true of Christ’s
Ascension. In Him our nature is taken up to the throne of God. His
Resurrection assures us that ‘them which sleep in Jesus will God bring with
Him,’ His passage to the heavens assures us that ‘they who are alive and
remain shall be caught up together with them,’ and that all of both
companies shall with Him live and reign, sharing His dominion, and molded to
His image.
If we would know of what our manhood
is capable, if we would rise to the height of the hopes which God means that
we should cherish, if we would gain a living grasp of the power that fulfils
them, we have to stand there, gazing on the piled cloud that sails slowly
upwards, the pure floor for our Brother’s feet. As we watch it rising with a
motion which is rest, we have the right to think, ‘Thither the Forerunner is
for us entered.’ We see there what man is meant for, what men who love Him
attain. True, the world is still full of death and sorrow, man’s dominion
seems a futile dream and a hope that mocks, but ‘we see Jesus,’ ascended up
on high, and in Him we too are ‘made to sit together in heavenly places.’
The Breaker is gone up before them. Their King shall pass before them, and
the Lord at the head of them.’
There is yet another aspect in which
our Lord’s Ascension bears on our hopes for the future, namely, as connected
with His coming again. In that respect, too, the contrast of Elijah’s
translation may serve to emphasise the truth. Prophecy, indeed, in its
latest voice, spoke of sending Elijah the prophet before the coming of the
day of the Lord, and Rabbinical legends delighted to tell how he had been
carried to the Garden of Eden, whence he would come again, in Israel’s
sorest need. But the prophecy had no thought of a personal reappearance, and
the dreams are only dreams such as we find in the legendary history of many
nations. As Elisha recrossed the Jordan, he bore with him only a mantle and
a memory, not a hope.
‘Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye
gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into
heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven.’
How grand is the use in these mighty words of the name Jesus, the name that
speaks of His true humanity, with all its weakness, limitations, and sorrow,
with all its tenderness and brotherhood! The man who died and rose again,
has gone up on high. He will so come as He has gone. ‘So’—that is to say,
personally, corporeally, visibly, on clouds, perhaps to that very spot, ‘and
His feet shall stand in that day upon the Mount of Olives.’ Thus Scripture
teaches us ever to associate together the departure and the coming of the
Lord, and always when we meditate on His Ascension to prepare a place for
us, to think of His real presence with us through the ages, and of His
coming again to receive us to Himself.
That parting on Olivet cannot be the
end. Such a leave-taking is the prophecy of happy greetings and an
inseparable reunion. The King has gone to receive a kingdom, and to return.
Memory and hope coalesce, as we think of Him who is passed into the heavens,
and the heart of the Church has to cherish at once the glad thought that its
Head and helper has entered within the veil, and the still more joyous one,
which lightens the days of separation and widowhood, that the Lord will come
again.
So let us take our share in the ‘great
joy’ with which the disciples returned to Jerusalem, left like sheep in the
midst of wolves as they were, and ‘let us set our affection on things above,
where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God.’
Elijah's Translation and Elisha's Deathbed
2 Kings 2:12, 13:14
‘And Elisha saw it, and he cried, My
father, my father, the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof.’— 2
KINGS 2:12
‘. . .And Joash, the King of Israel,
came down unto him, and wept over his face, and said. O my father, my
father, the chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof.’— 2 KINGS 13:14
The scenes and the speakers are
strangely different in these two incidents. The one scene is that mysterious
translation on the further bank of the Jordan, when a mortal was swept up to
heaven in a fiery whirlwind, and the other is an ordinary sick chamber,
where an old man was lying, with the life slowly ebbing out of him. The one
speaker is the successor of the great prophet, on whom his spirit in a large
measure fell; the other, an idolatrous king, young, headstrong, who had
despised the latter prophet’s teaching while he lived, but was now for the
moment awed into something like seriousness and reverence by his death.
Now the remarkable thing is that this
unworthy monarch should have come to the dying prophet, and should have
strengthened and cheered him by the quotation of his own words, spoken so
long ago, as if he would say to him, ‘All that thou didst mean when thou
didst stand there in rapturous adoration, watching the ascending Elijah, is
as true about thee, lying dying here, of a common and lingering sickness. My
father, my father, the chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof.’ Seen or
unseen, these were present. The reality was the same, though the appearances
were so different.
I. We have in the first case the
chariot and horsemen seen.
To feel the force of the exclamation
on the lips of Joash, we must try to make clear to ourselves what its
original meaning was. What did Elisha intend when he stood beyond Jordan,
and in wonder and awe exclaimed, ‘The chariot of Israel and the horsemen
thereof’?
It does not seem to me that the
interpretation of the words now in favour is at all satisfactory. It tells
us that the expression is to he taken as in apposition with the exclamation
‘My father, my father’; and that both the one phrase and the other
mean—Elijah! Yet what a preposterous and strange metaphor it would be to
call a man a chariot and pair, or a chariot and cavalry! It seems to me that
the very statement of this explanation, in plain English, condemns it as
untenable. It is surely less probable that Elisha in that exclamation was
describing Elijah than that he was speaking of that wondrous chariot of fire
and horses of fire that had come between him and his master, and that his
exclamation was one of surprised adoration as he gazed with wide-opened eyes
on the burning angel-hosts, and saw his master mysteriously able to bear
that fire, ringed round by these flaming squadrons, possibly standing
unscathed on the floor of the chariot, and swept with it and all the
celestial pomp, by the whirlwind, into heaven.
But why should he say ‘the chariot of
Israel ’? I think we take for granted too readily that ‘Israel’ here means
the nation. You will remember that that name was not originally that of the
nation, but of its progenitor and founder, given to Jacob as the consequence
and record of that mysterious wrestling by the brook. And I think we get a
nobler signification for the words before us if, instead of applying the
name to the nation, we apply it here to the individual. When Elijah and
Elisha crossed Jordan they were not far from the spot where that name was
given to Jacob, ‘the supplanter,’ whom discipline and communion with God had
elevated into Israel. And they were near another of the sites consecrated by
his history, the place where, just before the change of his name, the angels
of God met him and ‘he called the name of the place Mahanaim.’ That means ‘
the two camps ,’ the one, Jacob’s defenceless company of women and children,
the other, their celestial guards.
It seems reasonable to suppose that,
in all probability, a reminiscence of that old story of the manifestation of
the armed angels of God as the defenders and servants of His children broke
from Elisha’s lips. As he looks upon that strange appearance of the chariot
and horses of fire that parted him and his friend, he sees once more ‘the
chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof,’ the reappearance of the shining
armies whose presence had of old declared that ‘the angel of the Lord
encampeth round about them that fear Him, and delivereth them.’ And now the
same hosts in their immortal youth, unweakened by the ages which have
brought earthly warriors to dust and their swords to rust, are flaming and
flashing there in the midday sun. What was their errand, and why did they
appear? They came, as God’s messengers, to bear His servant to His presence.
They attested the commission and devotion of the prophet. Their agency was
needful to lift a mortal to skies not native to him. Strange that a body of
flesh should he able to endure that fiery splendour! Somewhere in the course
of that upward movement must this man, who was caught up to meet the Lord in
the air, have been ‘changed.’ His guards of honour were not only for tokens
of his prophetic work, but for witnesses of the unseen world and in some
sort pledges, suited to that stage of revelation, of life and immortality.
How striking is the contrast between the translation of Elijah and the
Ascension of Christ! He who ascended up where He was before needed no
whirlwind, nor chariot of fire, nor extraneous power to elevate Him to His
home. Calmly, slowly, as borne upwards by indwelling affinity with heaven,
He floated thither with outstretched hands of blessing. The servant angels
did not need to surround Him, but, clad no longer in fiery armour, but ‘in
white apparel,’ the emblem of purity and peace, they stood by the disciples
and comforted them with hope. Elijah was carried to heaven. Christ went. The
angels disappeared with the prophet and left Elisha to grieve alone. They
lingered here after Christ had gone, and turned tears into rainbows flashing
with the hues of hope.
II. We have in our second text the
chariot and horsemen present though unseen.
We are now in a position to appreciate
the meaning of Joash’s repetition to Elisha of his own words, spoken under
such different circumstances.
Elisha was by no means so great a
prophet as Elijah. His work had not been so conspicuous, his character was
not so strong, though perhaps more gentle. No such lofty and large influence
had been granted to him as had been given to the fiery Tishbite to wield,
nor did he leave his mark so deep upon the history of the times or upon the
memory of succeeding generations. But such as it had been given him to be he
had been. He was a continuer, not an originator. There had been a long
period during which he appears to have lived in absolute retirement,
exercising no prophetic functions. We never hear of him during the interval
between the anointing of Jehu to the Israelitish monarchy and the time of
his own death, and that period must have extended over nearly fifty years.
After all these years of eclipse and seclusion he was lying dying somewhere
in a corner, and the king, young but impressible, although, on the whole,
not reliable nor good, came down to the prophet’s home, and there, standing
by the pallet of the dying man, repeated the words, so strangely reminiscent
of a very different event—‘ My father, my father! the chariot of Israel and
the horsemen thereof!’
And what does that exclamation mean?
Two things. One is this, that the angels of the Divine Presence are with us
as truly, in life, when unseen as if seen. So far as we know, it was only to
Elisha that the vision had been granted of that chariot of fire and horses
of fire. We read that at Elijah’s translation on the other side of Jordan,
and consequently at no great distance off, there stood a company of the sons
of the prophets from Jericho to see what would happen, but we do not read
that they did see. On the contrary, they were inclined to believe that
Elijah had been caught up and flung away somewhere on the mountains, and
that it was worth while to organise search-parties to go after him. It was
only Elisha that saw, and Elijah did not know whether he would see or not,
for he said to him, ‘If thou shalt see me when I am taken from thee, then’
thy desire shall be granted.
The angels of God are visible to the
eyes that are fit to see them; and those eyes can always see them. It does
not matter whether in a miracle or in a common event—it does not matter
whether on the stones by the banks of Jordan or in a close sick chamber,
they are visible for those who, by pure hearts and holy desires, have had
their vision purged from the intrusive vulgarities and dazzling brightnesses
of this poor, petty present, and can therefore see beneath all the apparent
the real that blazes behind it.
The scenes at Jordan and in the
death-chamber are not the only times in Elisha’s life when we read of these
chariots and horses of fire. There was another incident in his career in
which the same phrase occurs. Once his servant was terrified at the sight of
a host compassing the little city where Elisha and he were, with horses and
chariots, and came to his master with alarm and despair, crying, ‘Alas! my
master, how shall we do?’ The prophet answered with superb calmness, ‘Fear
not: for they that be with us are more than they that be with them . . ..
Lord, I pray Thee, open his eyes that he may see. And the Lord opened the
eyes of the young man, and he saw; and, behold, the mountain was full of
horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.’ They had always been there,
though no one saw them. They were there when no one but Elisha saw them.
They were no more there when the young man saw them than they had been
before. They did not cease to be there when the film came over his eyes
again, and the common round took him back to the trivialities of daily life.
And so from the mouth of this not very
devout king the prophet was reminded of his own ancient experiences, and
invited to feel that, unseen or seen, the solemn forms stood
‘bright-harnessed,’ and strong, ‘in order serviceable,’ ranged about him for
his defence and blessing.
And are they not round about us? If a
man can but look into the realities of things, will he see only the work of
men and of the forces of nature? Will there not be—far more visible as they
are far more real than any of these—the forces of the Eternal Presence and
ever operative Will of our Father in Heaven? We need not discuss the
personality of angels. An angel is the embodiment of the will and energy of
God, and we have that will and energy working for us, whether there are any
angel persons about us or not. Scripture declares that there are, and that
they serve us. We may be sure that if only we will honestly try to purge our
eyes from the illusions and temptations of ‘things seen and temporal,’ the
mountain or the sick chamber will be to us equally full of the angel forms
of our defenders and companions.
Do we see them for ourselves; and, not
less important, do we, like Elisha, lying there on his deathbed, help else
blind men to see them, and make every one that comes beside us, even if he
be as little impressible and as little devout as this king Joash was,
recognise that in our chambers there sit, and round our lives there flutter
and sing, sweet and strong angel wings and voices? Will anybody, looking at
you, be constrained to feel that with and around you are the angels of God?
Still further, another cognate
application of these great words is that one which is more directly
suggested by their quotation by Joash. It does not matter in what way the
end of life comes. The reality is the same to all devout men; though one be
swept to heaven in a whirlwind, and another lady slowly away in old age, or
‘fall sick of the sickness wherewith he should die.’ Each is taken to God in
a chariot of fire. The means are of little moment, the fact remains the
same, however diverse may he the methods of its accomplishment. The road is
the same, the companions the same, the impelling—I was going to say the
locomotive—power, is the same, and the goal is the same.
Of Enoch we read, ‘He was not, for God
took him.’ Of Elijah we read, ‘He went up in a whirlwind to heaven.’ Of
Elisha we read, ‘He died and they buried him.’ And of all three—the two who
were translated that they should not see death, and the one who died like
the rest of us—it is equally true that ‘God took’ them, and that they were
taken to Him. So for ourselves and for our dear ones we may look forward or
backward, to deathbeds of weariness, of lingering sickness, of long pain and
suffering, or of swift dissolution, and piercing beneath the surface may see
the blessed central reality and thankfully feel that Death, too, is God’s
angel, who’ does His commandments, hearkening to the voice of God’s word’
when in his dark hearse he carries us hence.
Gentleness Succeeding Strength
2 Kings 2:13-22
The independent activity of Elisha
begins with verse 13 . How short the gap between the two prophets, and how
easily filled it is! Not the greatest are indispensable. God lays aside one
tool, but only to take up another. He has inexhaustible stores. The work
goes on, though the workers change, and there is little time for mere
mourning, and none for idle sorrow. Elisha’s first miracle is almost an
experiment. The mantle which lay at his feet had been thrown over him by
Elijah when he was called to his service, and it was now a token that office
and power had devolved on him. His first steps tread closely in Elijah’s
track; as those of wise and humble men, called to higher work, will mostly
do. The repetition of the miracle by the same means, and the invocation of
the Lord as the ‘God of Elijah,’—a new name, to be set by the side of ‘the
God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob’—express the humility which seeks to
shelter itself behind the example of its mighty predecessor. The form of the
invocation as a question indicates that Elisha had not yet attained
certainty as to his power, as not yet having proved it. ‘Where is the Lord
God of Elijah?’ is not the question of unbelief, but neither is it the voice
of full confidence, which asks no such question, because it knows Him to be
with it. It is the cry, ‘Oh that Thou mayest be here, even with unworthy me!
and art Thou not here?’ The faith was real, though young, and clouded with
some film of doubt. But, being real, it was answered; and it was because of
Elisha’s trust, not Elijah’s mantle, that the waters parted. God will listen
to a man pleading that ancient deeds may be repeated to-day, and, by
answering the cry addressed to Him as the God of saints and martyrs of old,
will embolden us to cry to Him as our very own God. We may learn from that
first half-tentative miracle the spirit in which men should take up the work
of those that are gone, the lowliness fitting for beginners, the wisdom of
seeking to graft new work on the old stock, the encouragement from
remembering the divine wonders through His servants in the past, and the
true way to assure ourselves of our God-given power; namely, by attempting
great things for Him, in dependence on His promise.
The miracle was wrought partly for
Elisha, and partly for others who were to acknowledge his authority. These
sons of the prophets, who stood on the eastern bank of Jordan, had probably
not been witnesses of the translation, even if their position commanded a
view of the spot. Purer eyes and more kindred spirits than theirs were
needed for that.
But they saw Elisha returning alone,
and the waters parting before him, and, no doubt, as he came nearer, would
recognise what he bore in his hand—Elijah’s well-known mantle. They hasten
to recognise him as the head of the prophets, and their acknowledgment
accurately expresses his place and work. Elijah’s spirit rests on him, even
though the two men and their careers are very different, and in some
respects opposite. Elisha is distinctly secondary to Elijah. He is in no
sense an originator, either of fresh revelations or of new impulses to
obedience. He but carries on what Elijah had begun, inherits a work, and is
Elijah’s ‘Timothy’ and ‘son in the faith.’ The same Spirit was on him,
though the form of his character and gifts was in strong contrast to the
stormier genius of his mightier predecessor. Elisha had no such work as
Elijah—no foot-to-foot and hand-to-hand duels with murderous kings or
queens; no single-handed efforts to stop a nation from rushing down a steep
place into the sea; no fiery energy; no bursts of despair. He moved among
kings and courts as an honoured guest and trusted counsellor. He did not
dwell apart, like Elijah, the strong son of the desert; but, born in the
fertile valley of the Jordan, he lived a life ‘kindly with his kind,’ and
his delights were with the sons of men. His miracles are mostly works of
mercy and gentleness, relieving wants and sicknesses, drying tears and
giving back dear ones to mourners. He is as complete a contrast to his
stern, solitary, forceful predecessor, as the ‘still small voice’ was to the
roar of the wind or the crackling hiss of the flames.
But, nevertheless, ‘there are
diversities of operations, but the same God.’ It is well to remember that
one type of excellence does not exhaust the possibilities of goodness, nor
the resources of the inspiring Spirit. The comparative merits of strength
and gentleness will always be variously estimated; but God’s work needs them
both, and both may join hands as serving the same Lord in diverse ways,
which are all needed. We should seek to widen our discernment to the extent
of the rich variety of forms of good and of service which God gives. Elijah
and Elisha, Paul and Timothy, Luther and Melanchthon, are all His servants.
Well is it when the strong can recognise the power of the gentle, and the
gentle can discern the tenderness of the strong, and when each is forward to
say of the other, ‘He worketh the work of the Lord, as I also do.’
The search after Elijah, insisted on
by the sons of the prophets, is of importance only as showing their low
thoughts and Elisha’s gentle spirit. He is their head, but he holds the
reins loosely. Fancy anybody ‘urging’ Elijah ‘till he was ashamed’! The
shame would very soon have mantled the cheek of the urger. But though, no
doubt, Elisha would tell what had happened, these ‘prophets’ only think that
Elijah has been miraculously borne somewhither, as he had been before, and
seem to have no notion of what has really happened. How hard it is to heave
heavy men up to any height of spiritual vision! How vulgar minds always take
refuge in the most commonplace explanations that they can find of high
truths! ‘Gone up to heaven! Not he! He is lying, living or dead, in some
gorge or on some hillside. Let us go and look for him!’ There is nothing on
which some people pride themselves more than upon being practical—which
generally means prosaic, and often means blind to God’s greatest deeds. To
go scouring wady and mountain for a man who had been taken up into heaven
was practical common sense indeed! But Elisha’s gentleness is to be noted.
He let them have their own way. Often that is the only plan for convincing
people of their errors. And, when the fifty scouts come back empty-handed,
all he says is a quiet ‘Did I no say unto you, Go not?’ ‘The servant of the
Lord must not strive,’ but ‘in meekness’ instruct ‘those that oppose
themselves’; and the effectual instruction is often to let them take their
own course.
The miracle of healing the waters is
of the beneficent kind usual with Elisha, inaugurates his course with
blessing, and typifies the healing power which God through him would exert
on men. Jericho had been recently rebuilt in spite of the curse against its
builders. The bitterness of the spring seems to have been part of the
malediction; for men would not be so foolish as to rebuild a city which had
only impure water to depend on. However that may be, the main lesson of the
miracle, beyond its revelation of the spirit of gentle compassion in Elisha,
is the symbolical one. The new cruse and the salt are emblems of the divine
gift which cleanses the human heart. Salt is an emblem of purification, and
its emblematic meaning prevails here over its natural properties; for the
last thing to cure a brackish spring was to put salt into it. The very
inadequacy, as well as inappropriateness, of the remedy, points the
miraculous and symbolical character of the whole. A jar full of salt could
do little to a gushing fountain. But it figured the cleansing power which
God will bring to bear on us, if we will; and it taught the great truth that
sin must be cleansed at the fountain-head in the heart, not half a mile down
the stream, in the deeds. Put the salt in the spring, and the outflow will
be sweet.
When the Oil Flows
2 Kings 4:6
‘And it came to pass, when the vessels
were full, that she said unto her son, Bring me yet a vessel. And he said
unto her, There is not a vessel more. And the oil stayed.’— 2 KINGS 4:6 .
The series of miracles ascribed to
Elisha are very unlike most of the wonderful works of even the Old
Testament, and still more unlike those of the New. For about a great many of
them there seems to have been no special purpose, either doctrinal or
otherwise, but simply the relief of trivial and transient distresses. This
story, from which my text is taken, is one of that sort. One of the sons of
the prophets had died in Shunem. He left a widow and two little children.
The creditor, according to the Mosaic law, had the right, which he was about
to put in practice, of taking the children to be bondmen. And so the
penniless, helpless woman comes to Elisha, as a kind of deliverer-general
from all sorts of distresses, and tells him her pitiful tale. He asks her
what she wants him to do, and she has no counsel to give. Then the thing to
do strikes him. He asks what she has in the house. It was a poor, bare hovel
of a place. There was not anything in it save a pot of oil, which was all
her property. He sends her to borrow vessels, of all sorts and sizes. He
takes the pot of oil, and shuts the door. Then she sets the two boys
fetching and carrying; and herself taking up the one possession that she
has, in faith she pours; and dish after dish is filled, and still she pours;
and they were all filled, and she kept on pouring. Then she said, ‘Bring
some more’; and the boys answered, ‘There are not any more,’ so then the oil
stopped.
There was no very special reason for
all this. It is not at all like most Biblical miracles. I do not suppose it
had any symbolical intention; but I venture to do a little gentle violence
to the incident, and to see in the staying of the oil when no more vessels
were brought to be filled, a lesson addressed to us all, and it is this: God
keeps giving Himself as long as we bring that into which He can pour
Himself. And when we stop bringing, He stops giving.
Now, if I may venture to be fanciful
for once, let me tell you of three vessels that we have to bring if we would
have the oil of the Divine Spirit poured into us.
I. The vessel of desire.
God can give us a great many things
that we do not wish, but He cannot give us His best gift, and that is
Himself, unless we desire it. He never forces His company on any man, and if
we do not wish for Him He cannot give us Himself, His Spirit, or the gifts
of His Spirit. For instance, He cannot make a man wise if he does not wish
to be instructed. He cannot make a man holy if he has no aspiration after
holiness. He cannot save a man from his sins if the man holds on to his sin
with both hands, like some shellfish with its claws when you try to drag it
out of its cleft in the rock. He cannot give the oil unless we bring the
vessels of our hearts opened by our desires.
If God could He would. ‘Ye have not
because ye ask not.’ But we are never to forget that God is not led to begin
His giving because we petition Him, but that the infinitude of His stores,
and the endless, changeless, unmotived, perfect love of His heart, make
self-communication—I was going to use a very strong word, and I do not know
that it is too strong—necessary to the blessedness of the blessed God, and,
long before we ever thought of Him, or sought anything from Him, there was
pouring out from Him all the fulness of His love: just as we may conceive of
the sunshine raying out before the orbs that were to circle round it had
been completely shaped, but were still diffused and nebulous.
But, while God is always giving, our
capacity to receive determines the degree of our individual possession of
Him. Or, to put it in the plainest words—we have as much of God as we can
take in; and the principal factor in settling how much we can take is—how
much we wish. Measure the reality and intensity of desire, and you measure
capacity. As the atmosphere rushes into every vacuum, or as the sea runs up
into and fills every sinuosity of the shore, so wherever a heart opens, and
the unbroken coast-line is indented, as it were, by desire, in rushes the
tide of the divine gifts. You have God in the measure in which you desire
Him.
Only remember that that desire which
brings God must be more than a feeble, fleeting wish. Wishing is one thing;
willing is quite another. Lazily wishing and strenuously desiring are two
entirely different postures of mind; the former gets nothing and the latter
gets everything, gets God, and with God all that God can bring.
But the wish must not only rise to
intensity and earnestness, but it must be steadfast. Suppose these two
little boys of the widow had held their vessels below the spout of the
oil-pot with tremulous hands, while they looked away at something else,
sometimes keeping the vessels right under, and sometimes shifting them on
one side, it would have been slow work filling the unsteadily held vessels.
So it is in regard to receiving God’s best gift. Our desires must be
unwavering. A cup held by a shaking hand will spill its contents, or will
never receive them. ‘Let not that man think that he shall receive anything
of the Lord.’ The steadfast wish is the wish that is answered.
Is it not a strange indifference to
our true good that we who have learned, as most of us have learned only too
well, that in this world to wish is not to have, should turn away from the
possibility that lies before us each, of passing from this disappointing
world of vain longings into a region where we cannot wish anything that we
do not get? There is only one thing about which it is true that, if you
want, and as much as you want, you will have; and that thing is found when
we turn away our wishes from the false, fleeting, and surface satisfactions
of earth, and fasten them upon God, ‘Who is able to do exceeding abundantly
above all that we . . . think.’ Wish for Him, and you have what you have
wished. Wish for anything else, and you may have it or you may not, but
depend upon it the fish is never half as big when it is out of the water as
it felt to be when it was tugging at the hook.
II. Another vessel that we have to
bring is the vessel of our expectancy.
Desire is one thing; confident
anticipation that the desire will be fulfilled is quite another. And the two
do not certainly go together anywhere except in this one region, and there
they do go, linked arm in arm. For whatsoever, in the highest of all
regions, we wish, we have the right without presumption to believe that we
shall receive. Expectation, like desire, opens the heart.
There are some expectations, even in
lower regions, that fulfil themselves. Doctors will tell you that a very
large part of the curative power of their medicine depends upon the
patient’s anticipation of recovery. If a man expects to die when he takes to
his bed, the chances are that he will die; and if a man expects to get
better, Death will have a fight before it conquers him. There are hundreds
of cases, in all departments of life, where he who sets himself to a task
with assured persuasion that he is going to do such and such a thing will do
it. ‘Screw your courage to the sticking-place, and we’ll not fail,’ said the
heroine in the tragedy; and there is a great truth in her fierce
encouragement.
All these illustrations fall far
beneath the Christian aspect of the thought that what we expect from God we
receive. That is only another way of putting ‘According to thy faith be it
unto thee.’ It is exactly what Jesus Christ said when He promised,
‘Whatsoever things ye ask when ye stand praying believe that ye receive
them, and ye shall have them.’
I am afraid that a great many of us
often have expectations fainter than desires; and that we should be very
much surprised if the thing that we ask for, in the prayers that we so often
repeat by rote, were granted to us. You will hear men praying for holiness,
for clean hearts, for progress in the Christian life, for a hundred other
such blessings. They do not expect that anything is going to come in
consequence, and they would be mightily at a loss what to do with the gift
if it did come. The absence of expectancy in our public petitions is to me
one of the saddest features in the Christian life of this day. If you expect
little, you will get little; and we do expect far less than we ought. We
cannot raise our confident expectations too high; for ‘He is able to do for
us exceeding abundantly above all that we ask’ as well as ‘think.’ The
Apostle has set the limit of our expectations, in the same context, and here
it is: ‘That we may be filled with all the fulness of God.’ There are two
limits: one is the boundless illimitableness of God’s perfection, and the
possibilities of our possession of Him are not exhausted until we have
reached that infinite completeness. But then, there is a practical, working
limit for each of us; and that is—what do you desire? and what do you
expect? God can give more than we can ask or think, but He cannot at the
moment give more than we expect or desire.
True, the vessels that we bring to be
filled with the oil are not like the vessels that the fatherless boys
brought. These were of a definite capacity; and the little cup when it was
filled was filled, and there was an end of it. But the vessels that we bring
are elastic, and widen out. The more that is put into them the more they can
hold, so that there is no bound to the capacity of a heart for the reception
and inrush of God; and there will not be a bound through all the ages of a
growing possession of Him in eternity. But for to-day, desire and expectancy
determine the measure of the gift.
III. Lastly, one more vessel that
we have to bring is obedience.
‘If any man will do His will, he shall
know of the doctrine.’ There is one case of the general principle that
wishes and anticipations are all right and well, but unless they are backed
up and verified by conduct, even wishes and anticipations will not bring
God’s gift. For it is possible for a man who, in his better moments of
devotion, has some desires after a loftier range of goodness and a completer
conformity to God than he ordinarily has, to rise from his knees and rush
into the world, and there live in some lust, or uncleanness, or vice, or
indulgence, or absorption in the cares of this life, in such a way as that
desires and anticipations shall vanish. If we fill our vessels full, before
we take them to the source of supply, with all manner of baser liquids,
there will be no room for the oil. We may contradict and stifle our desires
by our conduct, and by it make our expectations perfectly impossible to be
fulfilled. Are our daily doings of such a nature as that the Spirit of God,
which is symbolised by the oil, can come into our hearts; or are we
quenching and grieving Him so that He
‘Can but listen at the
gate
And hear the household jar within’?
Desire, Expectancy, and
Obedience—these three must never be separated if we are to receive the gift
of Himself, which God delights and waits to give. All spiritual possessions
and powers grow by use, even as exercised muscles are strengthened, and
unused ones tend to be atrophied. It is possible, by neglect of God and of
the gift given to us, to incur the stern sentence passed on the slothful
servant—‘Take it from him.’ By disobedience and negligence we choke the
channel through which God’s gifts can flow to us. So, brethren, bring these
three vessels, and you will not go away with them empty. ‘Open thy mouth
wide, and I will fill it.’
A Miracle Needing Effort
2 Kings 4:25-37
The story of Elisha is almost entirely
a record of his miracles, and the story of his miracles is almost entirely a
record of deeds of beneficence. Exception has been taken to it on the ground
of the strange accumulation of supernatural works, which have been said to
make it like some mediaeval saint’s legend. But why should it not be true
that, after Elijah had proclaimed the truth, his successor’s function was to
enforce it chiefly by his acts, and to seek to draw Israel back to God by
‘the cords of love’ and the gentle compulsion of mercies? The careful
consideration of the work of the two prophets makes the peculiarities of
Elisha’s perfectly intelligible. This story of the great lady at Shunem, her
joy over her only child and his piteous death ‘on her knees,’ is one of the
tenderest and sweetest pages in the history. Late won and early lost, the
poor boy lies pale and dead on Elisha’s bed at Shunem, while the mother
hurries across the plain of Jezreel to Carmel,—a distance of some fifteen or
sixteen miles,—where Elisha was then living, probably near the place of
Elijah’s sacrifice. This passage begins with her approach.
I. Note first the meeting (2 Ki
4:25-28 ).
Somewhere on the slopes of Carmel,
commanding a view of the plain stretching away in the blue distance
eastward, sat the prophet. His eye was keen, though probably he was now old,
and he recognised the lady at a distance, as she rode swiftly towards the
mountain. He appears to have suspected that this unusual visit meant some
calamity, and his gentle heart went out towards his hostess and friend.
Gehazi could not get back sooner than she could come, but sympathy could not
sit passive and watch her approach. So the instinctively despatched message
beautifully witnesses the prophet’s keen affection, and, as it were, the
eager leap of his sympathy. So swift and ready to flash into act is the
fellow-feeling of the Highest with the sorrows of us all; so should be the
compassion of each with another. The higher in gifts or office in the
kingdom a man is, the more is he bound to carry his sympathy in an
outstretched hand. It is worth very little when it comes slowly. It is
priceless when it runs to meet the mourner before she speaks.
The detailed question put into
Gehazi’s mouth describes the circle within which this woman’s heart
moved,—her husband, her child, herself. If these were well, nothing could be
very ill; if ill, nothing could be well. But the message, which came so warm
from Elisha’s lips, had been cooled on the road, and sounded formal from
Gehazi. It is hard for selfish indifference to carry tender words without
freezing them. The bearer of sympathy must be sympathetic. As Gehazi spoiled
Elisha’s message, so we Christians too often do our Master’s, and cool it
down to our own temperature. The fact that Gehazi had done so is suggested
by the curt answer, ‘Peace!’ It is often quoted as the language of
resignation, but it seems much rather to be evasion of the question, and
that because her sorrow shrank from unveiling itself to the questioner.
Nothing makes grief dumb so surely as prying and yet indifferent intrusion.
A tenderer hand than Gehazi’s is needed to unlock the sad secret of that
burdened breast.
It was perhaps partly pique at her
silencing him, and partly mere unfeeling attention to ‘propriety,’ which
made the servant wish to check the convulsive grasp of the feet, which the
master allowed. Underlings are more careful of what they suppose to be their
superior’s dignity than he is. Much is permitted to love and sorrow, by a
prophet, which would be repressed by smaller men. ‘Her soul is bitter within
her’ pardons much, and only unfeeling critics will be punctilious in dealing
with even the extravagances of grief. But Elisha had another reason than
pity. He wished to know her pain, and therefore he let her cling to his
feet; for only there would she find her tongue. Does there not shine through
the figure of the gentle prophet the image of the gentler Christ, who will
not have the poorest and foulest spurned from His feet, though it be ‘a
woman who was a sinner,’ and lets us come as close to Him as we will, even
to hide our faces on His breast, that we may pour out all our sorrows and
sins to Him?
The limitations of the prophet’s
knowledge he frankly owns. How much better would it have been for the Church
if its teachers had been more willing to copy his modesty, and said about a
great many things, ‘The Lord hath hid it from me’!
The mother’s answer is indeed the cry
of a ‘bitter’ heart. Its abrupt questions and its reticence as to the
child’s death are pathetically true to nature, and sound yet across all
these centuries as if the bitter cry were for a grief of to-day. ‘Did I
desire a son?’ She upbraids Elisha and Elisha’s God for having forced on her
an unasked blessing. ‘Did I not say, Do not deceive me?’ She did ( verse 16
); and she upbraids Elisha again for a worse deceit than she had meant then,
by mocking her with a gift which was wrenched from her hands so suddenly and
soon. How many a sad heart is to-day tempted to raise this cry of anguish!
And how patient is Elisha with wild words, and how he discerns, beneath the
apparent rough reproach, the misery which it implies and the petition which
it veils! Elisha’s Lord is no less tender in His judgment of our hasty,
whirlwind words, when our hearts are sore; and if only we speak them to Him
and cling to His feet, He translates them into the petitions which they
mean, and is swift to answer the meaning and pass by the sound of our bitter
cry.
II. We note the ineffectual
experiment of the staff (2 Ki 4:29-31)
The supposition that Gehazi was sent
in such haste with the hope that the touch of the staff might bring back
life, is dismissed as ‘impossible’ by most commentators, who have therefore
some difficulty in saying what he was sent for. Some of the Rabbis answered,
‘To prevent putrefaction,’ which would set in soon on that harvest day.
Others say that the intention was to ‘prevent more life escaping from him.’
But ‘dead’ is not usually supposed to be an adjective admitting of
comparison. Others find the reason in the wish to deliver Israel from the
superstitious veneration of such things as the staff, by showing that it was
powerless. But verse 31 plainly implies that the result of Gehazi’s attempt
was not what had been expected. Why need there be any hesitation in taking
the natural meaning, and supposing that Elisha sent his servant quickly, ‘if
peradventure’ the touch of his staff might suffice, and followed in person,
because he did not know whether it would. There is nothing unworthy of a
prophet who had just confessed his ignorance in the supposition. His
unobtrusive spirit delighted to hide its power behind material vehicles, as
is seen in most of his miracles; and, if he remembered how he himself, in
his early days, had parted the waters with his master’s cloak, he might
think it possible that his servant should work a miracle with his staff.
The Shunemite quotes his own words on
that far-off day; and perhaps she was reminded of them by perceiving the
analogy of the two incidents. But her clinging to Elisha shows her doubt of
the success of the attempt; and she was right. Why did the staff fail?
Perhaps because of its bearer. Gehazi always appears unfavourably, and
Elisha’s staff loses its power in such hands. The mightiest instruments are
weak when selfishness and coldness wield them. An unworthy minister can make
the Gospel itself impotent. It is an awful thing to carry ‘the rod of Thy
strength’ and to hinder its exerting its energy. But possibly the
non-success of the attempt was meant to teach Elisha and us that miracles of
life-giving are not to be wrought so easily, but need the effort of the
prophet himself. We cannot delegate the work of God, and no sending of
others will do instead of going ourselves. Such things are not achieved
without much personal toil, pains, and self-sacrifice.
III. So we come to the last step,
the communication of life ( 2 Ki 4:32-37 )
It was noon when the child died. The
mother’s journey would take three or four hours, and the return at least as
much. It would then be dark when the two reached her desolate home. She had
laid the boy on Elisha’s bed, as if even that brought her some comfort. It
is difficult to say whether ‘them twain’ ( verse 33 ) means him and the
mother, or him and the child; but the expression of the next verse, ‘went
up,’ suggests that the prayer with shut door was in the lower part of the
house, and that the mother’s cry was joined to the prophet’s petitions. Such
prayer is the true preparation for such a miracle. Beautiful consideration,
born of sympathy, led him to shut out curious onlookers, and then to go up
alone to the little chamber where that pale, tiny corpse lay. No eye but a
mother’s could have seen what followed without profanation; and a mother’s
heart would have been torn by hopes and fears if she had seen.
The actual miracle is remarkable for
two peculiarities—the effort required and the slowness of the process. Of
course, there is a profound and beautiful use to be made of the prophet’s
action in laying himself upon the dead child, mouth to mouth, and hand to
hand, if we regard it as symbolic of that closeness of approach to our
nature, dead in sins, which the Lord of life makes in His incarnation and in
His continual drawing near. It is His own life which Jesus imparts, and it
is imparted because He comes near and touches us. It is the warmth of His
own heart which passes into those who live by derivation of life from Him.
And Elisha may well stand as symbol of Jesus in this miracle. But besides
that use of the narrative, which is no mere fanciful playing with it, we
should also note the difference between the prophet and Christ in their
miracles. Jesus raises the dead by His bare word. His expressed will is
all-sufficient. Elisha prays, and then puts forth somewhat prolonged
efforts, from which at first there is no effect, and which drain him of
force, so that he is obliged to pause and leave the chamber, and gather
himself together for a renewal of them. The ease of the one sets the
difficulty of the other in a strong light. And the life which came back with
a rush, in full stream, at Christ’s bidding, comes only by degrees at
Elisha’s prayer and work. The one worker is the Lord of life, who speaks and
it is done; the other is but the channel of power, and the appearance of
effort and gradualness in result is owing to the narrowness of the channel,
not to the inadequacy of the power.
In all Elisha’s gentleness and
lowliness there is yet a certain dignity as God’s prophet; and it was not
fitting that he should come from the scene of such a miracle with the glow
of it upon him, to seek for the mother. So he summons her by Gehazi, and
then, with beautiful delicacy, leaves her to go alone into the chamber. None
are to see the transports of her joy, not even the author of it. How
beautiful, too, are the quiet words, ‘Take up thy son’! She has no words;
but, for all answer, comes close to him (there is no ‘in’ in verse 37 ), and
once again, but with what different feelings, clasps his feet. Not even
Gehazi, or any other stickler for propriety, has the heart to thrust her
back this time. The story draws a curtain over that meeting in the prophet’s
chamber. Sad hearts who have vainly longed for such a moment, can fancy the
rapture. But the day will come, not here, but in the upper chamber, when
parted ones shall clasp each other again; and many a mourner shall hear
Jesus say from the throne what He once said from the Cross, ‘Woman, behold
thy son; son, behold thy mother.’
Naaman's Wrath
2 Kings 5:10,11
And Elisha sent a messenger unto
Naaman, saying, Go and wash in Jordan seven times, and thy flesh shall come
again to thee, and thou shalt be clean. 11. But Naaman was wroth, and went
away.’— 2 KINGS 5:10, 11 .
These two figures are significant of much beyond themselves. Elisha the
prophet is the bearer of a divine cure. Naaman, the great Syrian noble, is
stricken with the disease that throughout the Old Testament is treated as a
parable of sin and death. He was the commander-in-chief of the army of
Damascus, high in favour at Ben-hadad’s court; his reputation and renown
were on every tongue, but he was a leper. There is a ‘but’ in every fortune,
as there is a ‘but’ in every character.
So he comes to the prophet’s humble
home in Samaria, and we find him waiting, a suppliant at the gate, with his
cavalcade of attendants, and a present worth many thousands of pounds in our
English money.
How does the prophet receive his
distinguished visitor? In all the rest of his actions we find Elisha gentle,
accessible, forgetful of his dignity. Here his conduct would be discourteous
if there were not a reason for it. He is reserved, unsympathetic, keeps the
great man at the staff-end, will not even come out to receive him as common
courtesy might have suggested; sends him a curt message of direction, with
not a word more than was necessary.
And then, naturally enough, the hot soldier begins to explode. His pride is
touched; he has not been received with due deference. If the prophet would
have come out and chanted incantations over him, and made mystical motions
of his hands above the shining patches of his leprous skin, he could have
believed in the cure. But there was nothing in the injunction given for his
superstition to lay hold of. His patriotic susceptibilities are roused. If
he is to be cleansed by bathing, are not the crystal streams of his own
city, the glory of Damascus, better than the turbid and muddy Jordan that
belongs to Israel? So he flounced away, and would have sacrificed his hope
of cure to his passion if his servants had not brought him to common-sense
by their cool remonstrance. He would have done any great thing which he had
been set to do; he had already done a great thing in taking the long
journey, and being ready to expend all that vast amount of treasure, and so
surely there need be no difficulty in his complying, were it only as an
experiment, with the very simple and easy terms which the prophet had
enjoined.
Now, all these points may be so put as
to suggest for us characteristics of that gospel which is God’s cure for our
leprosy. And the whole story shows us as in a glass what human nature would
like the gospel to be, and how we sick men quarrel with our physic, and
stumble at those very characteristics of the gospel which are its main glory
and the secret of its power. My only purpose in this sermon is to bring out
two or three of these as lying on the surface of the story before us.
I. First, then, God’s cure puts us
all on one level.
Naaman wished to be treated like a
great man that happened to be a leper; Elisha treated him like a leper that
happened to be a great man. ‘I thought, he will surely come out to me, and
stand, and call on the name of the Lord his God.’ The whole question about
his treatment turns on this, Whether is the important thing his disease or
his dignity? He thought it was his dignity, the prophet thought it was his
disease. And so he served him as he would have served any one else that in
similar circumstances, and for a like necessity, had come to him.
And now, if you will generalise that,
it just comes to this—that Christianity brushes aside all the surface
differences of men, and goes in its treatment of them straight to the
central likenesses, the things which, in all mankind, are identical. There
are the same wants, the same sorrows, the same necessity for the same
cleansing beneath the queen’s robes and the peer’s ermine, the workman’s
jacket and the beggar’s rags.
Whatever differences of culture, of
station, of idiosyncrasy there may be, these are but surface and accidental.
We are all alike in this, that we ‘have sinned, and come short of the glory
of God’; and our Great Physician, in His great remedy, insists upon treating
us all as patients, and not as this, that, or the other, kind of patients.
The cholera, when it lays hold of ladies and gentlemen, deals with them in
precisely the same fashion that it does when it lays hold of waifs on the
dunghill; and a wise doctor will treat the Prince of Wales just as he will
treat the Prince of Wales’s stable-boy. Christianity has nothing to say, in
the first place, to the accidents that separate us one from the other, but
insists on looking at us all as standing on the one level and partaking of
the one characteristic. We may be wise or foolish, we may be learned or
ignorant, we may be rich or poor, we may be high or low, we may be barbarian
or civilised, but we are all sinners. The leprosy runs through us all,
according to the diagnosis of Christianity, and our Elisha deals with Naaman
as he deals with the poorest footboy in Naaman’s cavalcade who is afflicted
with the same disease.
Now that rubs against our
self-importance; a great many of us would be quite willing to go to heaven,
but we do not like to go in a common caravan. We want to have a compartment
to ourselves, and to travel in a manner becoming our position. We are quite
willing to be healed, but we would like to be healed with due deference. You
are an educated man, a student; you do not like to take the same place as
the most unlettered, and to feel that the common fact of sin puts you, in a
very solemn respect, upon the level of these narrow foreheads and unlettered
people. And so some of you turn away because Christianity, with such
impartiality and persistency, insists upon the identity of the fact of sin
in us all, and passes by the little diversities on which we plume ourselves,
and which part us the one from the other. Dear brethren, I am sure that some
of my audience have been kept away from the gospel by this humbling
characteristic of it, that at the very beginning it insists on bringing us
all into the one category; and I venture to ask you to ponder with
yourselves this question, Is it not wise, is it not necessary that the
physician should look only at the disease and think nothing of all the other
facts of the patient’s character or life? Surely, surely, it is a fact that
we are transgressors, and surely it is a fact that if we be transgressors
that is the most important thing about us—far more important than all these
diversities of which I have been speaking. They are skin-deep, this is the
central truth, that we have souls which ought to stand in a living relation
of glad obedience to our Father in heaven; and which, alas! do stand in an
attitude often of sulky alienation, often of indifference, and not seldom of
rebellion. If so, then it is both wise and kind to deal with that solemn
fact first. In wisdom and in mercy Christianity deals with all men as
sinners, needing chiefly to be healed of that disease. ‘The Scripture hath
concluded all under sin’—shut up the whole race as in a great chamber, that
so cleansing and forgiveness might reach them all. They are gathered
together as patients in a hospital are gathered, that their sickness may be
medicined and their wounds dressed.
For this impartiality of the gospel,
putting us all on one level, and its determination to deal with us all as
sinners, is but the other side of, and the preparation for, that blessed
universality of a sacrifice for all, and a gospel for the whole world. Do
not quarrel with your physic because the Physician insists upon dealing with
you as sick men.
II. Then take another of the
thoughts that come out of the incident before us. God’s cure puts the
messengers of the cure well away in the background.
Naaman, heathen-like, wanted something
sensuous for his confidence in the prophet’s cure to lay hold upon. If the
prophet would only have come out, and done like the sorcerers and
magic-workers of whom he had had experience; if he would have come weaving
mystical incantations, and calling upon the God whom he worshipped, but whom
Naaman did not, and making passes with his hands over the leprous
places—then there would have been something for his sense to build upon, and
he would have been ready to believe in the prophet’s power to cure. But that
was the very thing which the prophet did not want him to believe in. Elisha
desired to conceal himself, and to make God’s power prominent. He wished to
cure Naaman’s soul of the leprosy of idolatry as well as to cure his body;
and we see, in the sequel of the story, that the very simplicity of the
means enjoined and the absence of any human agency, which at first staggered
the sensuous nature and offended the pride of Naaman, at last led him to see
and confess that there was no God in all the earth but in Israel. Therefore
the prophet keeps in the background. His part is not to cure, but to bring
God’s cure. He is only a voice. He brings the sick man and God’s
prescription face to face, and there leaves him. Naaman would have liked to
force him into the place of a magician, in whom miracle-working power
resided. Elisha will only take the place of a herald who proclaims how God’s
power may be brought to heal. So men have always sought to turn the
messengers of God’s cure into miracle-workers. Making the ministers of God’s
word into priests who by external acts convey grace and forgiveness, is a
superstition that has its roots deep in human nature. It is not that the
priests have made themselves so much as that the people have made the
priests. Here is an instance in a rude form of the tendency which has been
at work in all generations, and has been the corruption of Christianity from
the beginning, and is doing mischief every day—the tendency to place one’s
confidence in a man who is supposed to be, in some mysterious manner, the
bearer of a grace that will cure and cleanse. And the prophet’s position in
our story brings out very clearly the position which all Christian ministers
hold. They are nothing but heralds, their personality disappears, they are
merely a voice. All that they have to do is to bring men into contact with
God’s own word of command and promise, and then to vanish.
Christianity has no ‘priests,’
Christianity has no ‘sacraments.’ Christianity has no external rites which
bring grace or help except in so far as by their aid the soul is brought
into contact with the truth, and by meditation and faith is thus made
capable of receiving more of Christ’s Spirit. Our only commission is to
bring to you God’s message of how you may be healed. When we have said,
‘Wash, and be clean,’ as plainly, earnestly, and lovingly as we can, we have
done all our appointed office. We are heralds, and nothing more. Our
business is to preach, not to do rites, or minister sacraments. Our business
is to preach, not to argue. We are neither priests nor professors, but
preachers. We have to deliver the message given to us faithfully. We have to
ring out the proclamation loudly. The virtue of a town crier is that he make
people hear and understand. The virtue of a messenger is that he repeats
precisely what he was told. And a Christian minister has to lift up his
voice and not be afraid, to see to it that his speech be plain, and that it
do not overlay the message with fripperies of ornament, or affectations, or
personalities, and to plead earnestly and lovingly with men to come to the
divine Healer. John Baptist’s description of himself is true of them. With
rare self-abnegation, he would only reply to the question, ‘Who art thou?’
with ‘I am a voice.’ His personality was nothing. His message was all. A
musical string cannot be seen as it vibrates. So the man should be lost in
his proclamation. We are heralds and nothing more, and the more we keep in
the background and the less our hearers depend on us, the better. If you
want priests who will ‘call on the name of their God, and wave their hands
over the place,’ and convey grace and healing to you by anything that they
do for or to you, you will have to go beyond the limits of New Testament
Christianity to find them. So men quarrel with their medicine because their
cure is purely a spiritual process, depending on spiritual forces, and sense
cries out for sacred rites and persons to be the channels of God’s healing.
III. And now, lastly, God’s cure
wants nothing from you but to take it.
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