FAITH
[p. 77] FAITH
Matthew 15:21 - 28; Matthew 8:5 - 13; 2 Kings 13:14 - 21
It occurred to me that a word about faith would serve us at this time, having in view that we are living in the dispensation of faith — as it is said, “God’s dispensation, which is in faith” (1 Timothy 1:4). The tendency with us, to speak simply, is to drift from a position taken up by faith into one marked by sight, and thus we may retain only the outward forms accompanying faith and the dispensation of faith, and we come short of their power, for we can only have to say to God by faith. It is said, “he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him” and that “without faith it is impossible to please him” (Hebrews 11:6). That is a very sweeping, solemn word. And so, in speaking of faith, what one suggests is not that we have not faith, for I have no such thought. I seek to speak to you as to those who have faith. Indeed, no ministry can be of any value, or have any effect, save as addressed to faith — save there be faith in the hearers. But then this word of all words admits of degrees of comparison, and what I have particularly in view is to call attention, as I proceed, to that which marks all of us, and that is, failure to go the whole way. The disposition to proceed to half measures is perhaps realised in every one of us, and as it is according to our faith so be it to us, the measure of our faith is the measure of our blessing subjectively — not objectively; for what God has got for us is not measured by our faith, but by His own love. We can rest in that, and that ultimately He will accomplish in us His purpose is also assured. But things are enjoyed now on the principle [p. 78] of faith, and, as I said, it is according to our faith so be it to us.
And so I ventured to read these two passages in Matthew, because they speak of “great” faith — a degree of comparison which doubtless each one here would refrain from appropriating to one’s self. We are not living in the time of “great” faith, but it is well to have a standard, because these things are recorded for us so that we might have them in view, that we might have these two personages in our minds as spoken of in this way by the Lord.
The first, the Syro-Phoenician woman, was outside the range of religious privilege in that day, and this very fact brought out, through the Lord’s gracious dealings with her, the benefit of the work of God in her soul, showing that the mere enjoyment of outward religious privilege in itself may not conduce to the work of God. For, as the Lord says of the centurion, “Not even in Israel have I found so great faith”.
Now in regard to the Syro-Phoenician woman — a personage well known to most of us, doubtless, as oft presented in the gospel — all I wanted to say is that her faith enabled her to take account of the circumstances in which the government of God had placed her. The government of God has to say to us. It has to say to every person in the world, and to every nation, but it has to say, particularly, to the people of God, and what we may remark is that we are suffering among other things under the government of God in three distinct connections. Notwithstanding that we have faith, and have come into the benefits of faith, we are outwardly suffering, with all mankind, in three distinct connections. We are suffering, with all mankind, on account of Adam’s sin. These may be very simple remarks, but they are practical, and it is well to have them in view, in order that the position may be clear. We are suffering [p. 79] under the government of God on account of Adam’s guilt. All the outward circumstances and consequences of that guilt have come down to us, and it is our wisdom not to look for miracles. Faith accepts these circumstances, whatever they be. Faith accepts our conflicts, and goes through them with God.
And, then, we are suffering on account of the sin of the race in the rebellion against God at Shinar. We are suffering on account of the national situation in the world. We know that God, having sent his angels out to minister on account of the heirs of salvation, is modifying these national conditions; but, nevertheless, they exist, and the national conditions entail suffering. They entail inconvenience and suffering, irritation of all kinds, to men. We pray for the powers that be, because they are mercies, but they cannot set aside these conditions which have come down to us, and we as believers accept them. We do not ally ourselves with any nation; as we understand our calling we are outside of them; but, nevertheless, we are subject to the powers that be, and we are thankful for those powers. But the national conditions into which mankind has been plunged involve suffering.
And then there is that which comes home to us more keenly than all — the failure of the assembly. After we understand it aright, we understand it entails untold spiritual suffering, as well as other sufferings. The addresses to the assemblies show what an overcomer has to contend with. But an overcomer accepts the conditions humbly, and acknowledges his own share in them. He accepts them from God, and the sufferings entailed. His faith enables him to regard them in the light of the government of God, and he suffers accordingly.
Now this woman in Matthew 15 is a model for us in that respect. That is, she is set down here as one who has great faith, and it is great faith shown in her being enabled, through the Lord’s gracious dealings with her, to accept her position. She accepted the situation created by the government of God, and if we are to be with God, if we are to come in for the latter day gain of the Spirit’s administration, we shall have to learn how to accept intelligently our position in the governmental conditions which exist consequent upon the failure of the assembly. It means much. It means ridicule. It means that one has to abandon that which is held in honour in this world religiously. It means self-abnegation. It means the abandonment of pretension. It means the non-claiming of ecclesiastical position. It means acknowledging that all that is forfeited, and that we are cast entirely on the mercy of God at the present time, and that as we humble ourselves before Him, He makes a way for us, and He recognises the greatness of our faith, for it is great to be able to adjust ourselves in regard to the Lord according to the light in which He is presented at the present time.
And then in the case of the centurion, that is a faith which enables us to say that, notwithstanding these conditions, the Lord Jesus is in heaven, and He is as “a man under authority”. That is, He has received from the Father the administration of everything. The centurion says, “I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof”. I think that could be rightly said of every one of us religiously. As we take conditions into account, as we take our own actual conditions and circumstances religiously into account, it seems to me that this word fits. We are not “worthy”. But then, in acknowledging our own unworthiness — and how meet it is that we should — we say that He has power in heaven and upon earth, and that He does not need to come. He proposes to come, but He does not need to come. All He has to do is to say the word.
Now there is immense light in that for our souls,
[p. 81] dear brethren. As one reviews the field in which the Lord is operating, and as one considers the awful history of that to which His Name is attached, how comforting that He has only to say the word. One often thinks of Asia, and its millions, comprising half the population of the world. One is comforted in the thought that the Lord only has to say a word of blessing for them, and He will, for their day is coming. And as one thinks of the Christianised world, and what has come about in it, conditions wholly unfit for the Lord, unfit notwithstanding that His name is called upon them, how comforting to know that He can say the word. As we think of our brethren who are in these associations which are wholly out of keeping with the Lord’s name — names, indeed taken other than His, unfaithfulness thus acknowledged — how comforting that He can say the word. The results are according to our faith. If we are concerned about our brethren the Lord can say the word. He is under authority. That is to say, He is a Mediator in the exercise of divine authority, and He can say the word. How great, therefore, is the range opened up to us! If we are concerned about our brethren, we can intercede with Him. He says to the centurion, “Go, and as thou hast believed, be it to thee”. “And his servant was healed”. It is according to your faith. It is a faith position, and faith induces prayer. These two things go together. We see universal authority in the Lord, and that He need not come. He can simply speak, and effect deliverance by speaking. And so the centurion s servant is healed, as the centurion believed. “As thou hast believed”. He was healed from that hour. Would that the Lord would lay it upon us to think of the many there are throughout Christendom! The Lord knows those that are His, and, although the conditions are such that He cannot come, He can speak the word, and healing comes about, deliverance [p. 82] comes about. And so the Lord says here, “I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel”. He signalises these two events, and I mention them as standards for us. He signalises them as “great”. The faith was “great”. In the first instance he speaks of it feelingly. He says, “O woman, great is thy faith”.
I wanted to enlarge on these two or three thoughts in 2 Kings 13, because I find it is the Lord’s way to use the Old Testament for the elucidation in detail of what is stated in the New Testament. The Old is Scripture as much as the New. It has the same authority. It was written in view of the New; the New now being in our hands comes first, so that the believer brings out of his treasures things new and old. I hope you see in this passage that the whole thing shines by its very age. Its very age enhances its beauty, for it is but a picture of what I am saying, only in a collective sense. In this passage you see how great results are missed because of our resorting to half measures instead of whole measures. Instead of great faith you have little faith. Instead of great consequences you have little consequences — consequences of great value, surely, but not such as are available, and we want all that is available.
Now the king of Israel comes down to Elisha, and what you observe is that, although his reign, as the context shows, was other than according to God’s mind, yet grace was available. This picture is to impress us with the reign of grace, and how it overrules and overrides even our crookedness and unfaithfulness, and asserts itself, because God ever holds to the principle of the dispensation. The Christ is still on the Father’s throne, and grace still rules, and God maintains throughout the principle of the dispensation.
And so the king of Israel weeps upon the prophet’s face. There was some respect for Elisha. And then he says, “My father! my father! the chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof”. How poorly this fine expression sits on the lips of this unbelieving king, but nevertheless, it was a fine expression. It was an expression first used by Elisha. It was an expression which entered into the dispensation, and characterised it. And God loves to have us go back to the beginning. We are now in a time of the most abject weakness. Elisha is sick of the sickness whereof he died. What a dark day! What a prospect! But he had not died. I have no doubt his sickness may be taken as a suggestion of the weakness that marks our own time. Let us accept it. We are living in a day of extremely small things — outward weakness — but Elisha still lives, and the reminder of his early ejaculation as he saw Elijah ascend brings out the latent strength that is there, and that is what I want to impress upon us, that there is latent strength. The Holy Spirit is still here. That does not mean that we can count on Pentecostal days, because the Holy Spirit is necessarily limited on account of the state of the vessel. You understand that I am not speaking of the Person of the Spirit of God, for He is God Himself; but the state of the vessel is so extremely paralysed and weak that the operations of the Spirit are necessarily limited; but, nevertheless, the blessed Spirit of God remains, and everything now hinges on our faith.
And so as King Joash says, “My father! my father! the chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof”, Elisha says, “Take bow and arrows”. It is through you that the power of these horsemen and the chariot is to be expressed. I take it to myself. If I speak of the Spirit, if I speak of Pentecost, and of the power of God that shone there, I take it to myself. It is for each of us to say to himself, “This power is to be exercised through me”. It is thus we come into the power of God. And so the prophet says, “Take bow and arrows”, these being the symbols in [p. 84] that day of the chariots of Israel — of the power of the chariots of Israel and the horsemen. He says, “Open the window”, and “shoot”. “Open the window eastward”. What light enters into the soul as one contemplates what the east denotes! How one can look away from the dark history of the public assembly, and think of the coming of the Lord! What hope fills the breast as one thinks of the past coming of the Lord. As John says, “We know that the Son of God has come, and has given us an understanding” (1 John 5:20). But then He is coming. As the sun rises in the east, with all its benign power, dispelling the mists of darkness in this world, so Jesus shall arise, and faith knows it. And so as one looks toward the east, opens a window and shoots, one’s arm is empowered by the sense of the power of our Lord Jesus Christ. For how can one pull the bow and let the arrow fly, except in that power? It stimulates us as we think of it. The king shot.
I want now to come to what is very searching, because whilst he shot that one arrow towards the east, the prophet’s hands steadied him. It was not then a question of the king’s power, because he had not any. It was a question of the power of Elisha, weak though he was in the sickness whereof he died. But there was power there. The apostle Paul realised that power as no one else — “since ye seek a proof of Christ speaking in me” (2 Corinthians 13:3) — and moreover he preached the gospel by that power, by the power of Christ speaking in Him. From Jerusalem and round about Illyricum he preached it fully. He realised it more than anyone. Now we have come to a day of weakness. We cannot look for Pauline strength. What we can hope for now in humility is the hands of Elisha in his sickness. I hope that you will be able, spiritually, to understand that it refers not to the weakness of Christ, but to the weakness of the vessel. It refers to the limited conditions that [p. 85] mark the people of God. But, nevertheless, the power is there. That one shot towards the east was by the power of Elisha. As one might say, the coming of the dawn, and the sense for the moment of the support of Christ, notwithstanding the weakness of the vessel, enabled him to shoot, and he shot. If anyone here is aspiring to serve the Lord, this is a most valuable lesson. You begin with the power of Pentecost and accept the weakness of the present time, and you see that you are dependent on the support of the Lord.
But now he says, “Smite upon the ground”. We now come, as I said, to what is searching. This smiting of the ground is another matter. From the use of the word ‘ground’ in Scripture, there cannot be a doubt but that it refers to one’s own self. One has to learn to disallow the flesh, and that the flesh profits nothing. It was as though Elisha said, ‘The next shooting is to be in your own strength’. You have to learn to shoot in your own strength, and how can I shoot, that is, exercise the power of God, unless I disallow the flesh? For God will not use the flesh; however cultured, however acceptable it may appear to men, God will not use it. And so the king smites thrice — half measures. The thing is to go all the way, and disregard the flesh in toto. Elisha began thus. Elijah went up, and the mantle of Elijah fell from him and Elisha took it. He had rent his own garments in two pieces, and he crossed the Jordan by the power of Elijah’s mantle. He disallowed the flesh from the very outset, and hence the wonderful ministry of Elisha, the wonderful grace and miracles that flowed in his strength. And so the king smites but thrice, and the prophet was wroth with him. You say, ‘Well, he did well’, but could he not have done better? There is a good meeting in this district. Could it not be better? Could it not be more spiritual? Can there not be more results from testimony? You say, ‘Anyway, he smote thrice instead of twice, or once’, but why not “five or six times”, and then a complete victory — not half measures? If we go the whole length we come to first conditions, in the principle of them. We come back to the Spirit, and in coming back to the Spirit, in the total disregard and setting aside of the flesh, we come into the assembly in all its blessedness — not in the outward power that marked the beginning, but as it was said to Philadelphia, “Thou hast a little strength” (Revelation 3:8). The Lord does not say, ‘I have a little strength’. He has all power. It was what Philadelphia had. How did she get it? By self-judgment, by disallowing the flesh in toto. And so we come into the good of the Spirit, so that there is the thing which the assembly had at the outset, not in quantity surely, but in quality. And so the prophet was wroth. He says, “Thou shouldest have smitten five or six times; then hadst thou smitten Syria till thou hadst consumed it”. This is what God would lay upon us. Not to settle down to half measures, but to go on to the full limit of what is available. “If, by the Spirit, ye put to death the deeds of the body, ye shall live”, (Romans 8:13). We come into the gain of the Spirit in the disallowance, by the Spirit, of the flesh.
I just go on to the burial, because you see the shooting five or six times means we have such power as to overcome the enemy. There would be complete victory. But there was more needed.
The king failed, and now what comes out is that Elisha died, and he was buried. You will observe that it does not tell us where he was buried. It is not here a question of distinction in burial, as in the case of the kings of Israel and Judah. Usually we are told where they were buried. But in the case of Elisha it is not where he was buried, but the fact that he was buried. Now, if there is failure on the side of our responsibility, God comes in. That is, we are brought face to face with the fact that Christ [p. 87] died, and was buried. It is a question of testimony here. God is now asserting that if we are on the line of half measures, He is not. He began with the death and burial of Christ. The gospel preached to the Corinthians was that “Christ died for our sins, according to the scriptures; and that he was buried” (1 Corinthians 15:3). So that God is now asserting His way. It is a question of testimony, and as we come to see it, we begin to look to God, because on this line God must act. It is not a question of shooting with bow and arrows, but rather a question of burying. I see now that God has His way, and that He must have His way, and that His principle is not only death, but burial. The man has to go completely, so that what we find is that Elisha died, and was buried. That is God’s testimony — death and burial. Can we think for a moment that present conditions in Christendom conform in the least degree with the mind of God? Some of us may be in the mind of God, but take the public thing as it is. In what way does it conform with the mind of God? In no way. God does not give up His line. He began with death and burial, and He continues on that line. I am on that line when I get to burial. It does not say where Elisha was buried, it is just stated as a testimony that he was buried. Let us see what the secret of that is.
“They were burying a man”, it says. I have no doubt that that is baptism. “As many as have been baptised unto Christ Jesus, have been baptised unto his death” (Romans 6:3). Many assume that as baptised we can live here in this world, but we are baptised “unto his death”, and so “we are buried with him by baptism into death”: seeing that burying is involved in death. It is a part of it. These men were in line with God. They were burying a man. I wonder how much we are occupied with this? Instead of dressing ourselves up, and seeking to [p. 88] commend ourselves to one another and to men, and to put on a good front, the occupation now is burying. It is a burying time. The first burial in Scripture is that of Sarah, and it is in the light of resurrection. Isaac is raised, and Christ is raised figuratively, in Genesis 22, and Sarah is buried in Genesis 23. The first burial is in the light of resurrection, and it is the burial of a believer. The believer buries in the light of resurrection. He does not bury dolefully, but in the light of resurrection, and this particularly applies to our baptism. Baptism is burial, and one raises the question as to how many of us are occupied in this service of burying. “They were burying a man”. It is a time of putting ourselves under the water, and not only that, but remaining in accord with that by walking in newness of life. But we have to be buried. They were burying a man, but on account of the Moabites they could not do it. They did not complete their work. I have no doubt but that this refers to the divisions of Christendom. There had been Syrian bands which had been overpowered by Elisha. The Syrian band seeks to invade the land of Canaan. Here is a Moabitish band, and on account of the invasion of the land by this band, they could not bury the man. The work was unfinished.
The divisions of Christendom have really interfered with the burying process. Instead of the burial, you have huge organisations with the name of the Lord Jesus attached to them, and cathedrals, and all the pomp of Babylonish powers and wealth displayed in them — the very opposite to burial. And so the work was interfered with. It is only as we emerge from these things that we are enabled to begin the work of burying, and I hope the Lord will help us to keep on burying, because it is in keeping, among other things, with the dispensation. Elisha died, and was buried. That is the divine testimony. Christ died and was buried, and if He died vicariously, which He did — [p. 89] He would not have died otherwise — we have all to come to that position. Our baptism involves that we are buried, “buried with him by baptism into death”. And so the Lord would lay it upon us to bury, and to finish the work.
But what you see here is that, notwithstanding the interference of this Moabitish band that came into the land, the man “went down” (see New Translation). It does not say he was let down. He went down. I apprehend it is what he did himself. Certainly if it applies to baptism, which it surely does, it is for every one of us to see today that whether the band interferes or otherwise, we go down. They cast him into the grave of Elisha. He went down, and touched the bones of the prophet. You see we come down into accord with the mind of God. It says he revived, and stood up on his feet. Now we have come into direct accord with the mind of God, because He will not give up His mind. His principle is death, burial, resurrection. That is His principle, and I believe He is working it out at the present time, and hence the importance of burying, because in burying you place yourself in the hands of God.
I have no doubt that Israel in the future will come up in this way, as having touched Christ in death, and stand upon their feet, as Ezekiel says, “an exceeding great army” (Ezekiel 37:10).
This great principle of life is worthy of our deepest consideration. It is life out of death. I place myself where God can touch me, and he touches me in relation to the death of His Son. So that as the man touched the bones of Elisha he revived, and stood on his feet. This is what God wants. The man is a Colossian saint. He is raised — he knows that he is raised — on the principle of faith. We are buried with Him by baptism, we are raised by faith. In the power of God we walk in Christ (Colossians 2:6). We are raised by faith in the power of God, who “raised him from among the dead”, so that the Colossian Christian is a witness of the divine thought. He is standing on his feet, and that is the divine answer to all that there is at the present time. One risen man is a testimony for God. God is leading us to that, and as I said, it is a question of faith. It is a question of placing ourselves, as it were, in relation to the death of Christ unreservedly; burying, and then God comes in. We take the ground of being risen on the principle of faith of the working of God, who “raised him from among the dead”, and then we are quickened with Him, which is a present thing. It is not a question of faith, but it is a present thing, by the Spirit.