The New Cruse

The ministry of the “son of thunder” being ended, that of the “son of consolation” began. Its general character savored of the grace of Christianity, and no wonder, for it flowed (typically) from death and resurrection, as we have seen. Mark here the goodness of the divine heart. Sentence had been already passed upon guilty Israel, and its very executors had been named Hazael and Jehu (1 Ki. 19:15-17), yet God instituted a new ministry of grace. The avenging sword was held back awhile in for­bearing mercy. Even so is it with the world at this time. Its doom was long ago pronounced (Jn. 12:31; 16:11) yet no sooner had it been pronounced than the Holy Spirit was sent down from heaven with that wonderful message of love and mercy with which our hearts are so blessedly familiar, and which far exceeds all other divine overtures in earlier ages of the world’s history. But when the pre­sent divine mission is finished, the stroke will fall irre­mediably.
After the rapture of Elijah, Elisha tarried at Jericho, and there a very serious complaint was addressed to him by “the men of the city” (2 Ki. 2:18-19): “The situation of this city is pleasant, as my Lord seeth; but the water is naught, and the ground barren.” Thus man’s infidel pride, while it could rebuild the city in defiance of the Word of God, was powerless to remove the curse which lay upon it. And what are men able to accomplish in their little world today! With many schemes, long and laboriously matured, they are constrained everywhere to acknowl­edge that the world is very far from what they would like it to be. A blight manifestly rests on every creature device. The high hopes of today are the bitter disappointments of tomorrow. The “pleasantness” is there, for God has created it, but “the water” —the spring from which men would draw satisfaction and pleasure— “is bad” and “the ground is barren” —no fruit is produced for God. Both for God and for man everything is the exact opposite of what it should be.
God’s man was the only hope of the needy men of Jericho, even as the Man of God’s right hand is men’s only hope today, though they understand it not. Elisha called for a new cruse, with salt therein, “and he went forth unto the spring of the waters, and cast the salt in there, and said, Thus saith Jehovah, I have healed these waters, there shall not be from thence any more death or barren land.” The remedy was thus “a new cruse, with salt therein,” with its contents cast into “the spring of the waters.” Here we learn God’s way of blessing for man. It is not by the patching up of an old thing, but by the introduction of something altogether new. Those who have not lost confidence in flesh are all the time seeking to repair its glaring defects. It is frequently said at the present crisis that we should have more confidence in humanity, i.e., in flesh. But God has long since declared flesh to be incurable in its evil, and He condemned it as such in the death of Christ (Rom. 8:3-8). Nothing avails but a new nature. Hence the Lord Jesus speaks in Luke 5:36-38 of a new garment, new wine, and new bottles; and the apostle tells us in Ephesians 4:24 of a “new man, which, according to God is created in righteousness and true holiness.” Nicodemus was taught in John 3 that his great need was to be born wholly anew. Apart from this, religious person though he was, he could neither see, nor enter into the kingdom of God. God thus puts something “new” into the very “spring” of a man’s moral being.
Elisha’s cruse was full of salt. This great preservative represents the power which separates a man from evil, and keeps it far away. Only the man born of the Spirit possesses this. The religious man may indeed escape “the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,” but such a one is always in danger of being again entangled therein. There is no capacity for moral resistance, and so it happens to him “according to the true proverb, the dog is turned to his own vomit again, and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire” (2 Pet 2:20-22). The man born of the Spirit escapes “the corruption that is in the world through lust” (2 Pet 1:4), a much deeper thing than the world’s pollutions, which are but external.
At Jericho fruit followed the application of the salt. So in our case having “salt in ourselves” (Mk. 9:50), we are enabled to be fruitful for God in the midst of a barren world.