Reading:
1 Kings 17.
What we have in view, of
course, in the first place, is the servant of the Lord.
Once more God is found reacting to a state of things
amongst His Own people, rising up in His own Divine discontent,
and, as always, laying His hand upon an instrument for
recovery.
So Elijah stands before
us to represent such an instrument, and in God's
dealings with him we see the ways and the principles by
which a servant of the Lord is made an effectual servant,
in relation to the purpose of God.
The
Sovereign Choice of God
The first thing related
to any such instrument is the sovereignty of God. There
is never any adequate, natural explanation for the choice
and appointment by God of His servants. There may be
things in the instrument chosen which will be turned to
account when they are wholly sanctified and brought
under the government of God's Spirit, but when all has
been taken account of we have to recognise that God's choice of His
instruments is always a sovereign choice and not because
there is anything in the instrument to warrant
His choosing that instrument and selecting it from
others. He acts sovereignly in choosing and appointing
for His purpose. But, although that may be true, and
although God may go beyond choosing and may endue that
instrument with spiritual power, yet the instrument must
be controlled and disciplined continually by the hand of
God. Otherwise that servant of the Lord, or that
instrument, will be found following in the direction of
his own soul, following his own judgments, being
influenced by his own feelings. The intent and motive may
be very good, it may be very godly, but that does not
dispense with the necessity of that instrument being
continuously under the hand of God for government and
for discipline.
That is what comes very
clearly before us at the outset in the case of Elijah.
There is no doubt about God's sovereign choice, and there
is no question as to God having endued Elijah with Divine
power. Nevertheless, we see him at every step under the
hand of God, and those steps are all steps which are a
disciplining of the man himself. God is dealing with His
servant all the time, and bringing His servant all the way
along under His hand, so that the servant never becomes something
in himself, but has everything in the Lord, and only in
the Lord. We make a great mistake if we think that it is
enough to have the Divine thought as to Divine purpose,
that is, to have the knowledge of what God desires to do.
That is not enough, that knowledge of the thought of God
is not sufficient. There has to be a dealing with us in
relation to that Divine thought, and that dealing with us
is usually in a way which is altogether beyond our
understanding.
If God were dealing with
us as sinners, that is, if He were dealing with us
because of certain personal sins and personal faults, we
could quite clearly understand that; but when He is
dealing with us in relation to Divine purpose, as His
servants, His dealings with us go far beyond our
understanding. We are taken out into a realm where we do
not understand what the Lord is doing with us, and why
the Lord takes certain courses with us. We are out of our
depth, we are altogether baffled, and we are compelled -
that is, if we are going on with God - to believe that
God knows what He is doing, and we have just to move with Him
according to whatever light we may have, and believe that
these dealings with us, so far beyond our understanding,
are somehow related to that purpose with which we are
called, and that the explanation waits some distance
ahead, and we will find it when we get there. God does
not explain Himself when He takes a step with us. God
never comes to a servant of His and says, 'Now I am going
to take you through a certain experience which will be of
this particular character, and the reason for this is
so-and-so.' Without any intimation from the Lord, we find
ourselves in a difficult situation, which altogether
confounds us, puts us beyond the power of explaining that
experience, and God takes us through without any
explanation whatever until we are free, until the purpose
for which that experience was given is reached, and then
we have the explanation.
The point is, that even
an instrument, sovereignly taken up by God in relation to
His purpose, while knowing His main thought as to His
purpose, still needs to be kept every moment, at every
step, under God's hand, to be disciplined in relation to
that thought, to be governed entirely by God.
Elijah, great man as he
was, outstanding in the history of God's movements, was
brought to that very point where, although he knew that
God had laid hold of him, and although he knew what God's
intention was, he could not, by his own initiative and by
his own energy, freely go on to fulfil his mission. He
could not move more than one step at a time, and even so
that step had to be definitely governed by God. He could
only take that step under the Divine direction. You see
it here in this chapter to begin with. He had to take
just one step, and then the next, and that by Divine
direction, nothing beyond that. The Lord does not turn
even His greatest servants loose with an idea. He does
not liberate His most mightily used instruments to take a
free course, even though they may know what God is after.
Divine
Authority
Some of the reasons for
that are clear. Elijah's ministry was one of Divine
authority. There were powers at work which were more than
human powers. The case with Israel was not simply one of
spiritual declension. It was not merely that the people
had lost a measure of spiritual life and were on a lower
level than they should be, so that they had to have a
deepening of the spiritual life. That was not the
position at all. Baal had a mighty footing in Israel, and
the evil powers, the forces of darkness, were back of
this state of things, and the situation demanded more than
just spiritual help to Israel. Something more than a
ministry of exhortation and of spiritual food, something
more than a convention for the deepening of spiritual
life was called for. A ministry of Divine authority was
needed to deal with a spiritual situation back of the
condition in which the people were found. There were
mightier forces at work than merely human faults and
failings. The mighty power of Satan was there represented
by Israel's state. Elijah, therefore, must needs fulfil a
ministry of Divine authority, and the very first public
utterance indicates that that is what his ministry was:
As the Lord, the God of
Israel, liveth, before Whom I stand, there shall not be
dew nor rain these years, but according to my word (1
Kings 17:1).
There is a position, and
there is an authority by reason of that position. James
says that by his prayer the heavens were closed.
That is going beyond the merely earthly, human situation.
And again, by his prayer the heavens were opened. That is
authority in heaven.
Secret
Preparation
Now that ministry of
authority was born in secret preparation before it came
out in public expression. The Apostle James tells us
quite definitely that "Elijah was a man of like
passions with us, and he prayed fervently (you have
no mention of that in the historic record in the book of
Kings) that it might not rain; and it rained not on
the earth for three years and six months. And he prayed
again; and the heaven gave rain..."
There is a secret
history with God. He came into his public ministry with
abrupt announcement. He simply stood there upon the
platform of the universe, as it were, and made his
declaration. But that is not all. There is a secret
history with God behind that. All such ministry of Divine
authority has its beginning hidden from the public eye,
has its roots in a secret history with God. That kind of
ministry, born out from that secret history with God,
needs very special government by God to preserve its
safety, to safeguard it from all those forces which can
destroy it, and that is why Elijah, having such a
ministry, needed to be governed in every step by God.
There must be no generalization of movement in his case,
there must be that specific movement, God dictating every
step. So God preserves that authority as He produces it,
that is, by a hidden life. Such a life and such a
ministry must not be exposed, otherwise it will be
destroyed.
Separation
From The Self-life
So the Lord said to
Elijah, "Get thee hence..." Hence? Where from?
From this exposure, this publicity, this open place with
all its dangers. "Get thee hence, and turn thee
eastward, and hide thyself by the brook Cherith, that is
before Jordan." Hide thyself. Geography may
have little to do with it. What is here spiritually is
"hide thyself". Cherith means separation
or cutting off, and that is linked with Jordan. Cherith
is a tributary of the Jordan. We know what Jordan stands
for, the death of the self-life. In the major sense, the
Lord's servants have been to Jordan; that is, the
self-life has been set aside; but they have to keep near
Jordan, and Jordan has to govern them at every step. The
most paralysing thing to a ministry of Divine authority
is "thyself". It is, in other words, the
strength of our own souls. Elijah was a strong-minded
man, a strong-willed man, a man capable of very strong
and drastic actions, of pouring out a great deal of his
own soul-life with great heat, and the self-life of a
servant of God is a great peril to the spirit. Paul makes
it perfectly clear that, at an advanced point in his
ministry and in his spiritual life, when God had
entrusted him with visions and revelations unspeakable,
which it was not lawful for a man to utter, the main and
most immediate peril and menace to the ministry of that
revelation was himself. 'Lest I should be exalted above
measure...." Then the self-life had not been
eradicated from Paul. Paul was not clear of the peril of
doing great damage to purely spiritual ministry, and God
had to take a special precaution against the self-life of
His own servant, not the sinful life in its old sense,
but the self-life. 'Lest I should be exalted..."
I... exalted! What is that? That is the exaltation of the
ego, the self. What dangers are in that "I",
and how truly it stands in peril of getting into an
exalted place, a place of power, a place of influence, a
place of authority. It is in this sense that the Lord has
to say, "Hide thyself": 'get to the place of
cutting off, of separation.'
This was so different
from what you might expect. You see, here is a man,
having had this deep, secret preparation with God in much
prayer, who finds himself brought out in Divine authority
to make a great announcement which represents a crisis in
the purpose of God. You would expect that from that
point he would go straight on from strength to strength,
from place to place, would at once become a recognised
authority, a recognised servant of God, and be very much
before the public eye. But God would guard against any
servant of His taking up a Divine purpose and a Divine
commission in himself, taking it up in his own energy.
That will destroy it, and there must be a hiding, a very
real hiding. If a geographical hiding is God's way of
getting a spiritual hiding, well, be it so. If God
chooses to send us out of the realm of public life and
ministry into some remote and hidden place, in order to
take us away from the peril that is imminent of our becoming
something, of our being taken up to be made something of,
our going on in the strength of our own self-life, that
is all well and good; but whether it be geographical or
not, the word of the Lord to all His servants would
always be, Hide thyself!
Adjustableness
Then you see, connected
with that, as a part of it, the servant of the Lord must
be found always in the place where he is pliable, where
the Lord can get a ready and immediate response. The
servant has no programme, therefore there is nothing to
upset. He has no set course, therefore the Lord has
nothing to break. He is moving with God, or staying with
God, just as the Lord directs. He must be mobile in the
hands of the Lord, that is, capable of being moved at any
time, in any way, without feeling that everything is
being broken up and torn to pieces.
"Get thee hence...
and hide thyself by the brook Cherith... and it came to
pass... that the brook dried up." The Lord did not
say that it would not dry up, and the fact that the Lord
told Elijah to go to the brook Cherith did not mean that
the Lord was going to preserve the brook forever. It was
a step, and the Lord said, in effect: 'That is the next
step. I do not promise you that you will stay there
always. I am not saying that that is your last abiding
place, and that you can settle down there forever. That
is your next step: go there and be ready for anything
else that I want.'
This is a spiritual
condition, of course. No one is going to take this
literally. If we were to begin to apply this literally
as to our business here on earth, we might get into
confusion; but we have to be ready in spirit for the Lord
to do anything that He likes, and never to feel that
there is any contradiction when the Lord, having directed
us in one way, now directs us in another. It is a matter
of being in the hands of the Lord without a mind of our
own made up, though the way be hidden from our own
reasoning, from our own will, from our own feelings,
hidden from all that soul-life, so that the Lord has a
clear way with us.
The brook dried up!
Well, were you dependent on the brook? If so, you are in a
state of utter confusion when the brook dries up. Were you
dependent upon the Lord? Very well, let all the brooks
dry up and it is quite all right. Dependence on the Lord
is a governing and an abiding law of true spiritual
power. Elijah has been spoken and written of as the
prophet of power. If that is true in any special way, he
was very certainly the prophet of dependence.
That relationship to the
Lord made it possible for the Lord to do other things,
and to lead him on into new realms of revelation and
experience. Oh, what a thing adjustableness is! If we are
not adjustable, how we prevent the Lord from bringing us
into His full revelation and purpose.
Those disciples of John
the Baptist were adjustable, and it was because of that that they
came to know the Lord Jesus. You will remember there were those
disciples of John who followed Jesus, and said,
"Master, where dwellest Thou?" He said,
"Come and see." Now had they been fixed and
settled, saying, 'We are John's disciples and we must
stand by John; we must stay with John, and move with John;
let Jesus have His Own disciples, but we stand by John,'
they would have lost a great deal. But they were open and
adjustable, and moved beyond John.
Those disciples of
John which Paul found at Ephesus many years afterward, to
whom he said, "Did you receive the Holy Ghost when you
believed", were adjustable. When they heard what
Paul said, they were baptized into the Name of the Lord
Jesus. They were ready to go on from John to Christ, and
so they came into the greater fullness (Acts 19).
Unless we are adjustable
we shall miss a great deal. Elijah was adjustable, and so
God could lead him on. The Lord allowed the brook to dry
up because He had something more for His servant to
learn, and something more to do through him, and so He
said, "Arise, get thee to Zarephath... I have
commanded a widow woman there to sustain thee." He
went to Zarephath, and was made a blessing by his
obedience.
Experience
of Resurrection
Then he was brought by
his new movement of obedience and faith into a new
exercise, a new perplexity, a new trial; for the woman's
son died. The woman was a widow with one son. The death
of the son meant for her the loss of everything. It
happened while Elijah was there, being looked after by
this woman, and he was there in his obedience to the
Lord. He had done this in obedience to the Lord, and now,
in the line of obedience to, and of faith in the Lord,
the Lord allowed this catastrophe to come into the very
home to which he had been sent. It clearly raised a big
question in Elijah's heart. 'God sent me here, I know
that! God raised me up and commissioned me, and in the
course of the fulfilling of my commission He brought me
into this situation! There is no doubt about the Lord
having led this way, and now here I am, having done what
the Lord told me, having taken the course that He
indicated, and everything has come into death and
confusion; there is a terrible contradiction here!' All
sorts of questions can arise when you get in a position
like that, and you can begin to go back on your guidance,
begin to raise questions as to whether, after all, you
were led, or whether you made a mistake in your guidance.
Do that, and you only get more and more into the mire.
What is all this about? God has a revelation for Elijah
beyond anything that he had yet received. He was going to
bring him into something that was more than what he had known. He
was going to show His servant that He is the God of
resurrection; and that has to be wrought in a deep way
into the very being of His servant through trial,
through perplexity, through bewilderment. Thus the Lord
allows the widow's son to die, and the house to be filled
with consternation, and all concerned to ask big
questions.
The prophet goes up and brings the thing before the Lord, and
lays hold of God, and so relates himself to this
situation that he and the situation are one, and the
boy's resurrection is the prophet's resurrection. There
is identification of the prophet with the situation in
death, and then in resurrection. The mighty meaning of
the power of His resurrection, with new experience of
that for the servant of God, was an essential lesson, if
this authority was to be maintained, and this ministry to
work out to its ultimate meaning in the overthrow of the
powers of death, which were working destruction. The
servant of God must go through it all in his own heart.
This discipline of
Zarephath was relative to the whole ministry of the
prophet. Zarephath means testing and refining, and indeed it was
a refining fire. But Elijah came out, and
everybody else concerned came out into a new place in
resurrection.
The Lord write these
things in our hearts, and show us how they still remain
as spiritual values connected with the reaching of God's
end, the fulfilling of His purpose.
First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, Sep-Oct 1938, Vol. 16-5.