Elijah 15 - The Old Courage Again
By F.B. Meyer
In order to understand the striking episode before us, we must think ourselves out of this dispensation, the main characteristic of which is gentle mercy, and imagine ourselves back in the age that ended at Calvary. It is very important to have a right understanding of our times. We must not judge the past ages by our own high standards of forgiveness and love, learned in the life and death of Jesus Christ, who is the last and supreme revelation of God. And we must not import into our own age methods of thought and action which were once permissible and necessary, because cognate to the spirit of their times.
This lesson was once impressively taught by our Lord to His disciples. Fresh from the transfiguration, He was on His way to the cross. For some reason He did not take the usual route along the eastern bank of the Jordan, but chose the more direct course through Samaria. Traveling thus, they had probably reached the spot, of which we are soon to speak, which was once scorched and blackened by the cinders of Ahaziah's troops. Below them, in the ravine, lay a village, to which they sent a deputation, asking for entertainment in the night, which was darkening over them. But religious bigotry triumphed {142} over natural feeling, and the request was absolutely refused. Oh, if they had known that He was about to purchase the redemption of a world and institute a religion in which there should be neither Samaritan nor Jew, but one great brotherhood in Himself -- they would surely have bade Him welcome and pressed Him with hospitality, even though the mighty transaction was to take place within the limits of their hated rival, Jerusalem! "And when his disciples James and John saw this, they said, Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven, and consume them, even as Elias did? But He turned, and rebuked them, and said, Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of" (Luke 9:54). It was as if He had said, "Remember that in Me you have passed into a new epoch; the affairs of the kingdom of heaven will be managed on altogether different lines from those with which you are familiar. I shall not destroy the law and the prophets; but I am introducing a code which shall fulfill them after a new fashion. The new regime of mercy is already begun."
Let us clearly define to ourselves the difference in the dispensations. This is after the Spirit of the Son, dwelling in the bosom of the Father; that was after the spirit of the servant, clad in ardent zeal for the glory of God. This glows with the lambent fire of the Holy Ghost; that with the devouring fire of destruction. The keynote of this is salvation; of that, vindication. The Old Testament brims with striking teaching of the holiness and righteousness of God. God, our Father, was as merciful and long suffering then as now; and He gave many sweet glimpses of His loving heart. These glimpses became more numerous as the ages brought nigh the incarnation of the love of God. But men cannot take in too {143} many thoughts at once. Line must be on line, precept on precept. And so each preliminary age had some one special truth to teach, and that truth was accentuated and brought into prominence by special proofs and episodes. The age of the Mosaic Law, which shed its empire over the times of Elijah, was preeminently the era in which those awful and splendid attributes of the divine character -- God's holiness, justice, righteousness, and severity against sin -- stood out in massive prominence; as some of us have seen from the ancient capital of Switzerland, the long line of Bernese Alps rising above the plain in distant and majestic splendor, cold in the gray dawn or flushed with the light of morn and eve. It was only when those lessons had been completely learned that mankind was able to appreciate the love of God which is in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Critics -- who insensible have caught their conceptions of infinite love from the Gospels which they affect to despise -- find fault with the Old Testament because of its austere tones and its severe enactments. They point out many things inconsistent with the gentler spirit of our times. There is nothing surprising here. It could not have been otherwise in a gradual unfolding of the nature and character of God. The holy men who lived in those days had never heard the gentle voice of the Son of Man speaking the Sermon on the Mount. They had, however, very definite conceptions of the righteousness and holiness of God, and His swift indignation on sin. This inspired many of the Psalms in the hymnal of the Old Testament saints. This stimulated them to do deeds from which our gentler nature shrinks. But for this, Levi had never slain his brethren, or Joshua the Canaanites, Samuel had never hewed Agag in pieces before the Lord, and {144} Elijah had never presumed to slay the priests of Baal or call down fire from heaven to destroy the captains and their men.
And, as we read these deeds, we may well sink into quiet self-questioning. We need not fall into the extreme of Cromwell and his soldiers and introduce the speech or acts of those bygone days into our dealings with the enemies of truth and God. But we do well to ask whether -- granting that we forego the outward manifestation -- there is the same hatred of sin, the same zeal for the glory of God, the same inveterate enthusiasm for righteousness as there was in those days of force and decision and unswerving righteousness.
These considerations will help us to understand the narrative that awaits us, and will relieve the character of Elijah from the charge of vindictiveness and passion. Then we can consider, without compunction, the rising up again in his breast of something of his old undaunted courage and heroic bearing.
The story is as follows: Ahaziah, the son of Ahab, had succeeded to his father's throne and his father's sins. He shrank in cowardly fear from the hardihood of the camp and the dangers of the field, leaving Moab to rebel without attempting its re-subjugation. He led a self-indulgent life in his palace. But the shafts of death can find us equally in apparent security as amid threatening dangers. He was leaning on the balustrade that fence the flat roof of the palace when it suddenly gave way, and he overbalanced himself and was flung to the ground. Many are the balustrades on which we lean in hours of peril, which fail us to our hurt! When the first panic was over, the king was seized with intense longings to know how his illness would turn. In a strange freak, he sent messengers to one of the ancient shrines of Canaan, {145} which was dedicated to Baalzebub, the god of flies and the patron saint of medicine, who had some affinity with the Baal of his parents. This was a deliberate rejection of Jehovah, a daring choice of those ways which had brought the wrath of God on his father's house. It could not pass unnoticed, and Elijah was sent to meet his messengers as they were speeding across the plain of Esdraelon, with the announcement of certain death: "Thus saith the LORD... thou shalt not come down from that bed on which thou art gone up, but shalt surely die" (2 Kings 1:16).
The servants did not know the stranger. They may have been imported Tyrians who had never mingled in the life of the nation, and who were ignorant of the mighty prophet of God. Years also had probably elapsed since his last public appearance. However, they were so impressed by that commanding figure and authoritative tone and so awed by that terrible reply, that they determined to return at once to the king. They found him lying on the divan covered with cushions, to which he had been carried from the scene of his accident. And they told him the reason of their speedy return. Ahaziah must have guessed who the man was that had dared to cross their path and send him such a message. But, to make assurance surer, he asked them to describe the mysterious stranger. They replied that he was a man of hair. Long and heavy tresses of unshorn hair hung heavily down upon his shoulders, his beard covered his breast and mingled with the unwrought skins that formed his only dress. It was enough. The king recognized him at once, and said, "It is Elijah the Tishbite."
