The Power of His Resurrection # 21

Elisha and the Sons of the Prophets (continued)

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. Thee 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 parted 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 understand 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.

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(continued with # 22)