The Power of His Resurrection # 23

Elisha and the Sons of the Prophets (continued)

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."  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 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.

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(continued with # 24)