MAINTENANCE

D.L.Stewart

Genesis 2: 15 ; 1 Kings 17: 8, 9, 15, 16

I have been thinking of how things are maintained. This is always a concern to us as we have some fresh experience of blessing, whether individually or locally, and we wonder how this can be maintained. Adam was placed in the garden having in mind that it should be maintained as a place of delights for God. Everything there was absolutely suitable, planned with divine skill, to provide this; delights for man, too, of course - he was to eat freely - but what God had in mind was a place for His own pleasure. It was one of God's original thoughts, before sin came in, that He should have a place for His own delight. The thought of Paradise in the New Testament is similar - a place of delights. It says that Adam was put there "to till it and to guard it". We know, of course, that everything broke down then and that everything has broken down in the hands of man, and there is therefore always this concern as to how things are to be maintained. The prayer of Solomon was connected with this. Man had no part in the pattern but Solomon's prayer is concerned with the maintenance of things which had been reached in God's thoughts. In the New Testament this is seen pre-eminently in the prayer of Jesus in John 17, a prayer that covers the dispensation. His prayer to the Father is that His own might be kept, that what had been secured in the perfect workmanship, and what they represented. as entering into the dispensation, should be maintained. Perhaps it is only in this dispensation of the Holy Spirit and in His power that there are the means whereby things can be maintained. We know, of course, that, in spite of this, breakdown has come in. Then there is Paul with the elders at Ephesus, at the height of his ministry and all that had been reached there, and how he commits them to God for preservation.

In the scripture in Kings the word is "I have commanded a widow woman there to maintain thee". It was a time of grave departure and apostasy as at present, and then there is the sovereign reviving that Elijah would represent - the beginning of the chapter speaks of it - how he comes forward unexpectedly, representing God's word and the power of it, the tremendous power of it; the power of prayer too by "a man of like passions to us", Jas 5: 17. This section is concerned with how this is to be maintained, and the means for maintenance which Jehovah uses. In this section, at any rate, they are all found in the widow woman. It is nothing official, and it is not gift that is connected with maintenance. There is the prophetic word, of course, but the means are all provided in this house. Then there is the thought of command. What comes to light in this widow and her house is an area of things which is under divine command - a wonderful thing. There is a locality here, there is a gate, there is a house, there is a widow woman, and God selected this place. The Lord Himself speaks of it; He says "to none of them was Elias sent but to Sarepta", Luke 4: 26. Think of the divine eyes, "The eyes of Jehovah are in every place beholding the evil and the good" (Prov 15: 3), and the divine selection, divine choice - nothing in Israel - God working sovereignly, indicating something in relation to the present dispensation. So we need to be under divine command if the truth, if the light, if the enjoyment of things is to be maintained. How did Jehovah communicate with this person? There must have been some secret transaction that He can refer to her as under commandment. We are not to be afraid of commandment. If things are to be maintained among us it is a necessity. I have been struck with the fact that John in the New Testament speaks more of commandment than any other writer. He is the one who speaks about family conditions, and he speaks of himself as the one whom Jesus loved; but he speaks constantly, in his gospel, in his epistles and in Revelation of this great matter of commandment. Connected with the widow woman is the thought of dependence, weakness, bereft of outward support. We have known, perhaps, a little of it, but it is in the spirit of dependence alone that things will be maintained. The apostle speaks of the widow in Timothy as having "put her hope in God", 1 Tim 5: 5.

So the provision for maintenance in this section is in her house, the handful of meal in a barrel and the little oil in a cruse. The handful of meal could not speak of any other than Christ. It would be the product of exercise, of sowing and harvest, the death and resurrection of Christ, those features that belong to heaven and shone here in circumstances of humility and lowliness carried through to the other side of death. Then the threshing and the grinding in order that what is of Christ should become food available for the building up of that kind of manhood that is going to be maintained, and going to maintain things for God's pleasure and delight. I wondered about this word 'meal'; it does not occur much. In the instructions of Moses it is usually 'fine flour' which would be the evenness of the life of Jesus. There is one passage which refers to barley-meal. It is the passage which speaks about the searching matter of fidelity, Numbers 5, and in the midst of the searching process in the presence of Jehovah the oblation of jealousy, the barley-meal, was put into the woman's hands. As brought in in that way it must represent something of Christ. A handful of it is taken and burned upon the altar, showing that it is that which goes up to God for His pleasure. So it would seem that it might represent Christ in relation to fidelity to God. In this He stands over against the whole realm of infidelity, whether in Israel or in Christendom. In that chapter what is in mind is that what is true should come to light, to correspond to that which Christ represents. Christ then in His committal in absoluteness to the will of God is the kind of food for days of departure and apostasy and infidelity. This is the food that they ate for a whole year, she, and the prophet, and her house. Think of things being maintained for a whole year - summer and winter, seedtime and harvest, day and night, cold and heat, every kind of experience, every kind of assembly experience, and yet there is that in this house which is capable of maintaining things for a whole year. What food must have been in Antioch after Saul of Tarsus was brought there; "for a whole year they... taught a large crowd", Acts 11: 26. The Lord would encourage us to have this kind of food to maintain us. We have thought of the meal but there is also the oil. In the outward poverty of the situation there is yet the "little oil". She is not saying, like another woman did, that she had not "anything at all in the house but a pot of oil", 2 Kings 4: 2. She is not depreciating the blessed Spirit but she says I have only a little, a handful of meal, a little oil; enough for the next meal, enough for the next meeting; dependence upon the Spirit of God, here in order to make the things of Christ available to us, in order to build these things into us individually and collectively, in order that there might be the maintenance of what is for God's pleasure and for His delight. May the Lord bless His word.

LONDON

22 October 1974