The Power of His Resurrection # 25

Elisha and the Sons of the Prophets (continued)

In this incident in the fourth chapter they go through a practical experience. They gather for their sustenance in a day of pressure, but they gather indiscriminately, and find that death is in the pot. When such a state exists, and there is pressure, it is so easy to mix things up. It is so easy to bring along something which really is not life because it looks all right. The devil is taking advantage of a time of spiritual famine today to get into the pot things that are poisonous and deadly. There is a great need today among the Lord's people. There is a dearth of real spiritual food, and with it a sense of need. The enemy is taking advantage of that sense of need, and unfortunately it is those instruments which have no spiritual discernment who are bringing in the thing which is deadly to the Lord's people. One of the marks of our day is a lack of discernment and perception, an incapacity for discriminating between the true and the false, when the false looks like the true. Wild grapes and wild gourds look so much alike. You can be easily deceived by appearances, and so they are all put in together. And today you notice the mixture of the false and the true, and that is a deadly element. There is the true there, but there is something else mixed in, an in the long run it is proved to be not life as it promised to be, but death, a deadly deception, a deadly contradiction, a deadly denial.

The whole point is that of the absolute necessity of spiritual understanding, by which spiritual discrimination is made as to what is suitable to a rue spiritual life, and what is not suitable. You cannot feed what is of God upon something which is of man or of the world. It is unsuitable. That which is of God is a species which cannot thrive upon anything else but that which is of Him. If you feel it on anything else you introduce poison. We cannot live the risen life of the Lord upon anything other than what is of the Lord, and so Elisha cast meal into the pot. And what is the meal if it is not the Lord Jesus, the meal offering to God, God's absolute satisfaction with Christ? Prophets must always know what really is living food for the people of God. The sustenance of the Lord's people is by the impartation of Christ in His moral and spiritual excellencies.

Finally, in chapter 6 verses 1-7: "The place where we dwell with thee is too strait for us." The desire for extending the house may be quite a good one, we have nothing to say about that. The sons of the prophets take their axes and go down to obtain energetically the means for that extension. They enter upon a course of action for enlarging the house. And as they are felling the trees one man's axe-head comes off and falls into the water - the river Jordan. That is a calamity, but there are always lessons hidden in calamities. The elements here are those of energy, and the energy is represented by the axe. An axe is an energetic symbol. It speaks of strength in action. But this man who is the occasion of the story has a loose axe-head. His strength, his energy, is of an uncertain quantity and quality, and it fails to get through; it breaks down on the way. The parable is perfectly clear; we hardly need apply it. Here is a good purpose, good intention, good motive, the object is quite commendable, but the initiative is with the man, and the energy is of man: and man's energy in the things of God is a very uncertain quantity, and sooner or later it will break down, and a state of death will exist, because that axe-head is at the bottom of Jordan.

May we stay for a moment and recall a further reference to the axe-head in another part of the Scripture. You will remember that the cities of refuge were appointed for the benefit of such as accidentally killed another man, and this illustration is given: The case is supposed to two men who went one day into the woods to cut down trees, and one man's axe-head came off and smote the other man, that he died. It is interesting that that is cited as an illustration of how a man may die accidentally. The city of refuge was provided for him who caused the death, that the avenger of blood should not take his life for the life of the one who has died. But we must remember that there is a certain responsibility for seeing that your axe-head is not loose. It is all very well to say that it was an accident, but what about the responsibility for seeing before you started that the head was on the axe securely? There is a moral principle involved there.

Here is a man who started out with a borrowed axe, and he never looked to see whether his axe-head was perfectly safe. That loose axe-head instead of going into the Jordan might have gone into another man's head, and the question of death would have been involved. In principle it is the same thing. Morally it is one thing. The axe-head is at the bottom of Jordan, and typically a state of death has come about because of an attempt - spiritually interpreted - to do spiritual things with natural energies.

We need say no more, other than to conclude the incident. The axe-head came back, and the work was finished, though now in the power of resurrection. But for Elisha being on the spotted as the power of resurrection, as that which had conquered Jordan already, as that which had triumphed over death as represented by Jordan, that was the end of that man's work. There are other features, but we will not touch upon them. We are simply taking what  seems to be the heart of these things.

So we are brought to the fact that preparation for full usefulness to the Lord in the power of resurrection means that we have to go through an experience where our energies are brought to an end, where the strength of the flesh is buried in Jordan, and where we can only go on because we discover the power of His resurrection.

With the seeking for the body of Elijah you have the natural mind a work. In the seeking for the food you have the natural heart at work. In the loss of the axe-head you have the natural will at work. Mind, heart and will, all having to pass through death, to come into the realm of the power of His resurrection.

So that Elisha's connection with the sons of the prophets is full of illumination. We shall miss the mark, if we just dwell with the typology. We simply use it, in order to get to the spiritual side of things. It would be quite easy for us to go to the New Testament and see this principle, and that principle, and the other principle laid down, but that would be but a statement made. We have preferred to go to the Old Testament and illustrate principles. The principles are in the New  Testament as clearly as anything can be: for example, that the Cross does mean the end of the natural mind, so far as spiritual things are concerned: the Cross does mean that "they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh and the affections and desires thereof": the Cross does mean that the strength of "I" has to be crucified with Christ. But the Cross does mean also that in mind, heart, and will, the power of His resurrection has to be established, and can be.

While these sons of the prophets accepted the position in the beginning, it was only wrought into them stage by stage through experience, and each of those stages was simply the making real in them of the implications of their relationship to Elisha, what was bound up with him as being their head, their governing law of life.

We go through experiences to bring us there, but as we go through them we come to the place where we do know Him, and the power of His resurrection.

The Lord teach us more fully what this means.

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(continued with # 26 - (The Nature of the Life and Testimony of the Lord's People)