1 KINGS 17 (FROM CAC'S NOTES)
1 KINGS 17 (FROM CAC’S NOTES)
In the closing chapters of 1 Kings and the early part of 2 Kings we see how God maintains a witness to Himself at a time of great departure, answering to Thyatira in church history. It is not in Judah but amongst the ten tribes, so that it is the testimony as having in view the worst form of evil that has place amongst His people. It is from that aspect that things are considered here.
Chapter 17 is a private experience which goes on, known only to faith, but which stands in relation to the general and public corruption; that is, Elijah and the widow are instructed in divine resources at a time when famine conditions prevail generally. First, Elijah has to learn what it is to be personally sustained at the torrent Cherith, which seems to speak of divine resources as they may be known by the individual. But then, that is not intended to be all; it is followed by what is collective set forth in the widow who has a house. God commands certain spiritual resources for us individually, but He purposely orders that such resources do not suffice for us permanently. They have to give place to another order of things. We have to learn what God has commanded for us in house conditions.
But in such times as those of Ahab and Jezebel we must not expect to have experience of what is collective in a very great way outwardly. It would not suit the time that it should be so. It is a time when sovereignty will select its own means of working. A widow, who did not even live in Israel, one who would have been regarded as having no [p. 136] place or rights at all in Israel, is the one selected to be the representative of the household of faith. Things are small with her but they are in order. There is no carelessness, the meal is in a barrel, the oil in a cruse, and she has a vessel for the water. The Lord has great regard for order. 1 Corinthians is largely setting in order and Paul intimates that the whole order was not there: “But the other things, whenever I come, I will set in order”, 1 Corinthians 11: 34. To the Colossians he says, “Rejoicing and seeing your order”, Colossians 2: 5. Faith will be marked by a return to divine order. It is not only that Christ and the Spirit are available but They are available in the way of divine order. There is often piety and zeal without regard for divine order and things waste and fail. It is when the meal is in the barrel and the oil is in the cruse that they do not fail. Comparatively few today think that divine order is of importance, but those who are negligent as to order lose what is spiritual.
But “after these things” there is a further exercise because, having things in order and a permanent food supply that would reach to the end of the time of drought was not all that was in the mind of God. So death came in on the widow’s son; her one hope was cut off. It is remarkable that it is said, “There was no breath left in him”. I do not know that this is said of any other. It is an exercise which brings home to us the need of breath. It is not now a question of things being maintained unfailingly but of life being brought in where death was. I do not think the life question is touched upon in 1 Corinthians until chapter 15: 22, “Thus also in the Christ all shall be made alive”. This is followed by “The Spirit quickens” (2 Corinthians 3: 6), “The Lord is the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3: 17), “So that death works in us, but life in you” (2 Corinthians 4: 12), “He who has raised the Lord Jesus shall raise us also with Jesus” (verse 14), “That what is mortal may be swallowed up by life” (2 Corinthians 5: 4) and “That they who live should no longer live to themselves, but to him who died for them and has been raised” (verse 15). This is outside flesh condition; even Christ after the flesh is known no more. This leads on to Colossians.
Death in the widow’s house must have been more exercising than anywhere else, most surprising, even to Elijah but he took up the exercise. He carried him up to the upper chamber where he abode. The upper room suggests what is above the level of things here. The Lord had this in mind in the large upper room. Dorcas is put in the upper chamber (Acts 9: 37). Elijah was before God; he lived at a higher level than the widow and her son. But they were to know the power of where he lived. He took the son up and laid him on his own bed. He is, I think, in this a representative of Christ as we all ought to be. He stretched himself upon the child three times. God has the resurrection platform in His mind and that we should know it in a living way. It is something now brought about by the power of God that is unmistakably of God. The widow had faith before but now she knows that Elijah is a man of God. One may go on with things without the power of God and then sickness comes in and there is no breath left. Life is brought in through the exercises of the minister in 2 Corinthians. It is the power of God in vital expression.
Three successive experiences of Elijah in 1 Kings 17 were hidden from Israel but he was learning divine resources in secret before coming out in public witness. Is the education of the servant in private like this now in view of all the conditions which have to be met publicly today? The first is purely personal, the second brings in house conditions but in great weakness, the third the question of life out of death.
The conditions in christian profession react with us and we have to learn first to count upon God for personal [p. 138] sustenance so that we find a sufficiency as hidden from what is of man. God says, as it were, I only mean that to carry you a certain time. Elijah was to be maintained by a widow woman who had been learning to trust in God; she had resources in suitable vessels. It was a question of the extension of what she had.