"And Elisha came again to Gilgal. And there was a dearth in
the land; and the sons of the prophets were sitting before him;
and he said unto his servant, Set on the great pot, and boil
pottage for the sons of the prophets. And one went out into the
field to gather herbs, and found a wild vine, and gathered
thereof wild gourds his lap full, and came and shred them into
the pot of pottage; for they knew them not. So they poured out
for the men to eat. And it came to pass, as they were eating of
the pottage, that they cried out, and said, O man of God, there
is death in the pot. And they could not eat thereof. But he
said, Then bring meal. And he cast it into the pot; and he said,
Pour out for the people, that they may eat. And there was no
harm in the pot" (2 Kings 4:38-41).
With the sons of the prophets, we have the matter of the
preserving of the Lord's testimony, the knowledge of the mind of
the Lord for His people. With the pot, we have the preserving of
that testimony, sustenance for that testimony and its vessel. With
the wild gourds or vine, we have that life of nature which lies
under the curse, for with the curse, thorns and briers and all
such things came into the world, wild foreign lawless things, the
life of a fallen creation, the life of nature, and you cannot
preserve the Lord's testimony by the life of nature. There is
death there, and no official position can save you from those
consequences, if you resort to, or try to draw in, the life of
nature. In the meal which Elisha had cast into the pot, we have
clearly, unmistakably, that which speaks of the Lord Jesus in His
Divine humanity. The word which so evidently explains the meal is
in John 6:50-51.
"This is the bread which cometh down out of heaven, that a man
may eat thereof, and not die. I am the living bread which came
down out of heaven; if any man eat of this bread, he shall live
for ever; yea and the bread which I will give is My flesh, for
the life of the world."
Now, while there are many valuable lessons in this little
incident in the life of Elisha, the uppermost lesson and message
for us is just this. You and I will never be able to preserve a
testimony to the Lord unless we know what it is to continually
feed upon Christ's heavenly, divine and perfect humanity. That is
a difficult thing, I know, but it means this. If you and I, as the
Lord's people with whom the Lord's testimony is supposed to rest,
as in the case of the sons of the prophets, in any way or at any
time, revert to ourselves in our natural condition, the testimony
will at once pass from us, that is, death will intervene. The
testimony will be at an end, it will only be as we continually
transfer by faith from ourselves, what we are, to the Lord Jesus,
and live as on Him by faith, that the testimony will be kept
alive, will be a living testimony. That is a very simple lesson
and yet the most difficult lesson for anyone to learn, the most
difficult thing for anyone to continually do. Of course, the
doctrine is all right, we believe in the doctrine, and we are
ready to say it at any time, that the Lord Jesus is our life. We
say that with great emphasis, but the point is, Do we live there?
Is that our abiding position? A little later in John 6, the Lord
Jesus says, "He that eateth My flesh... abideth in Me, and I in
him", and the word there - "eateth" - is the continually active word. 'He that keeps on eating
My flesh abides in Me and I in him.' Something to be maintained
continually.
Now, for the livingness of the testimony, we must abide in Him in
this way: that we refuse to live on our own ground of what we are
by nature. We have discovered, and everyone here will agree, that
in that field there is nothing but wild gourds and thorns and
briers and all that sort of thing. Have you ever known any
beautiful things in your own nature? Some people seem to think
that they are finding them, and they are talking all the time
about living in their better selves and their best selves, but
that is the fullest possible evidence that they have never had
their eyes opened, that they know nothing whatever about the Cross
of the Lord Jesus. People who have no place for the Cross, the
Cross in its real meaning, talk like that, but to those who have
had their eyes opened by the Holy Spirit, the field of their
natural life is just full of these poisonous berries, these wild
things, and that is a field of death, its fruit is death. We had
better get out of that field and keep out of it, and there is a
fruitful field of living things, and that is the Lord Jesus.
I do wish that I could convey to you that inner thought in this
matter, that the Lord Jesus has really come, sent by God the
Father, right into our midst, and God says, "You are one thing and
He is an utterly different and altogether Other! You are that, and
naturally in your own natures, you will never be anything other
than that, so it is no use your trying to improve that!" The only
hope for you is that by faith - by living, continual faith - you
transfer your centre of life to Him, and, as you take your bread
for your body, you in faith and in spirit take Him to be that upon
which your hope rests, your confidence rests, you rest on what He
is! "This is My body which is given for you." This loaf,
this heavenly, Divine, sinless humanity, is our humanity by
faith. We by faith are identified with Him as we put our
faith into act. You see, you are in need, you are hungry, you may
die of hunger. Someone comes and puts bread in front of you and
says, "That will save your life, that will be life to you; that is
what you need, you will find in that everything for your
salvation!" And you look at it; "Yes, I believe what you say, I
believe that that will save me, that will deliver me from death,
that will be life unto me!" - and you leave it there,
and you die. That is doctrinal apprehension, you see, but if you
really believe according to New Testament ideas of belief, you do
not only say, "Yes, I believe what you say!", you take it, you act
upon your belief, and you take it and you live.
We must have
something more than a doctrinal faith, we must have an
appropriating faith which says, "I am this, and the Lord Jesus is
that, altogether Other, and God says that if I will but transfer
my basis of life from myself to Him deliberately and continuously
every day, I shall be delivered from death and I shall live", and
the testimony will be there! Let us ask the Lord more and more to
strengthen us in this matter of our continuous living upon what
the Lord Jesus is from God to us, and to cause us to cease forever
from hunting in the field of our accursed fallen nature for some
good.
I know what it is you want as you are searching. It is to be good
yourselves, to be altogether free from nature, from that nature
and all its marks, to be free from that, and really what you want
is sinless perfection in yourselves. Well, if ever you do get it
in this life, let me tell you, you will be in a deception which
will mean that the whole door to spiritual development and growth
will be shut, because the consciousness of our own utter
unworthiness and sinfulness as in ourselves is an essential to our
growing appreciation of the Lord Jesus. You come to finality in
any of these matters as in yourself, and that is an end of your
spiritual development.
How will we come to know the Lord in ever-growing fulness? How
shall we have an enlarging revelation and a deepening
appreciation? We shall come to that as we more and more, by the
work of the Holy Spirit in us, recognise how much we need the
Lord. When you have got finality in any matter, you have ended
need and need is essential to growth. So the Lord says, "Stop
hunting in that field! This is the fruitful field, this is the
living field - My Son! Live in Him, abide in Him by
faith!"
I know the problem that arises at once. Is there to be no change
in us at all? I am naturally very bad-tempered. Am I to say,
"Well, I am bad-tempered by nature, I always shall be bad-tempered
by nature, but the Lord Jesus is very good-tempered, and I believe
His good temper will be accepted by the Lord for me!"? That is the
kind of problem. I use temper as an illustration, it may be any
other thing. That is not the point at all. The point is this, that
you and I will never be changed in ourselves, but as we live on
the Lord Jesus, what He is takes the place of ourselves, and if at
any time after fifty, sixty or seventy years of Christian life you
leave the ground of the Lord Jesus, you will find your old bad
temper there. You never do get to the point where you can cease to
be bad-tempered if you leave your ground of Christ, and our only
way of escape from what we are is to live on Him. He becomes that,
He gets on top of these things, but we are never other than we are
in ourselves. But here, of course, arises the great difference
between soul and spirit which we will not go into now. The point
is the way of sanctification, is faith in the Lord Jesus. It is a
case of bringing in the meal where death is and death is turned
into life through faith in what He is. The Lord help us to see and
know the meaning of living by Christ, not existing, not
dragging out a miserable existence in doctrine, but living
by Christ.
Edited and supplied by the Golden Candlestick Trust.