1 Kings 1

Chapter 1. Jeroboam, or Sin and Its Influence

Chapter 1. Jeroboam, or Sin and Its InfluenceAnd he will give Israel up because of the sins Jeroboam has committed and has caused Israel to commit. (1 Kings 14:16)The Old Testament is a kaleidoscope of human character, revealing to us the failure of the human nature and driving us to Jesus Christ as the only remedy for man’s lost condition. The story of Israel’s fall is a true delineation of the roots and fruits of human depravity in every age. The text is a flashlight upon a dark life and the story that lies behind is a tragedy of curious and original wickedness. It is the picture of a brilliant man who went all wrong and set everybody else wrong too. A man who sinned and, worse than his own sin, made Israel sin—a sinful life and its more sinful influence on others. God help us to look a little at it as the pictures turn and see perhaps in some of them a mirror that will send us humble and contrite to the feet of Jesus. Not for themselves did these men fail on the shores of time, but as beacons for us, that we might receive instruction and warning and see our utter helplessness without Christ. Section I—The Story of JeroboamJeroboam was the founder of the kingdom of Israel, which for several centuries went down deeper and deeper until at last it disappeared. The first picture is a dramatic one—a young man is in Solomon’s employ in the heyday of that king’s glorious reign. He is girted and talented and Solomon puts him over the laborers who are building the supporting terraces. Suddenly an old prophet meets the young contractor one day and seizing his outer garments he tears them into 12 pieces and hands back 10 of the pieces saying, “Take ten pieces for yourself, for this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘See, I am going to tear the kingdom out of Solomon’s hand and give you ten tribes. But for the sake of my servant David and the city of Jerusalem,… he will have one tribe’” (1 Kings 11:31-32). Then he went on to say that if Jeroboam would be true to God, God would establish his kingdom and make it a witness for His name and a blessing to the world; but if he should be unfaithful, God would deal with him in judgment. Ahijah the prophet, passes on, and young Jeroboam, with his head inflated and his soul on fire, instead of waiting for God to fulfill His part, began to concoct plans of rebellion among the jealous people of Ephraim, of whom he was one. Solomon found it out and sought his life. Jeroboam had to flee to Egypt, where he remained until the death of Solomon. Rehoboam Solomon is in his grave, and his foolish son, Rehoboam, is on the throne. Rehoboam comes up to Shechem to meet the people and be crowned. Meanwhile they have sent for Jeroboam and have had a great convention, and talked it all over. They have made Jeroboam their spokesman and they tell the young king that if he will make some concessions they will serve him; but if he continues the forced labor and tribute of Solomon’s reign they will have nothing to do with him. Rehoboam takes three days to answer them and foolishly asks and acts upon the advice of some upstarts of his court and gives them an insolent reply. The Kingdom Divided Immediately the standard of rebellion is raised and an impassable gulf has come between the two sections of God’s people. Rehoboam’s agent is stoned to death and the king is compelled to flee for his life back to Jerusalem. The tribes have separated and nothing is left of David’s house but the tribe of Judah and a portion of Benjamin and Simeon. Rehoboam attempts to put down the rebellion, but God forbids it, and for once he is advised by the prophet. Jeroboam is now established upon his throne, and it is a splendid throne—the best part of Palestine, the fertile valley of Esdraelon, the beautiful city of Samaria and the vast plains and territories reaching beyond the sea of Galilee to the borders of Tyre and Sidon. God’s promises were behind Jeroboam and he might have had one of the grandest careers of the Old Testament. But he begins by building powerful fortifications, showing that he is depending upon the arm of flesh to secure his kingdom rather than upon the Lord. Political Policy His next step is a move in that political policy that has in every age only brought defeat and failure. He sees that Jerusalem, being the religious capital, his people will naturally go there to the temple for worship and the observance of the feasts they have been taught to keep since the time of Moses, and thus become attached to the Southern Kingdom. He established two new religious capitals, one at Bethel in the south and the other at Dan in the north, places at which he erects altars and begins a kind of hybrid worship more heathen than divine. The effect is to arouse the priests and Levites, and drive them to Judah, leaving him to his idolatrous and heathen worship. This was done for the purpose of saving his kingdom, but man-made religions and state churches have in every age failed. Divine Warning God now takes more stringent measures to bring him to conviction. Just as he is opening his new altar at Bethel an old prophet suddenly appears, coming up from Judah. His name is unknown, but he denounces Jeroboam as he is about to offer incense with his own hands, and God backs up his message by cleaving the altar in two and scattering the ashes. The king reaches out to arrest the old man and instantly his arm is withered and falls by his side. He is compelled to implore the prophet to forgive his transgression and restore his useless arm. This he does and then follows the prophecy that the bones of the priests who have ministered there shall yet be burned upon this altar, and that Josiah shall come forth to avenge the insult given to Jehovah. Repeated Warnings The prophet passes on, but on his way, through believing a false message, he is slain by a lion. His carcass is found with the lion standing guard like a very messenger from God, guarding it from insult, and yet showing that he had been slain in fulfillment of God’s Word. When the dreadful story reached Jeroboam he must have seen that the God who had sent that message to him could not be trifled with. Still we are told that Jeroboam did not repent, but hardened his heart and still went on in his willfulness and sin. Now comes the next dramatic picture. One of Jeroboam’s children, a little boy, very dear to him, falls sick, and no remedies avail. In his anguish the king thinks of the old prophet Ahijah. He is too proud to be known as relenting and supplicating, so he sends his wife in disguise to the old man. But the prophet cries out as she comes in, “Come in, wife of Jeroboam” (1 Kings 14:6). And then he bids her go back and tell her husband that, because of his wickedness and defiance of God, this child shall be the only one of his family that shall be buried, and the moment her foot enters her palace home her boy shall die and her house shall be accursed because of the sins of Jeroboam. Thestroke We cannot dwell on all that followed but the judgment came as the prophet had foretold. A little later we read of a war between Jeroboam and the house of Abijah in which 1.2 million men were engaged. Jeroboam was defeated and half a million of his army slain, the mightiest slaughter in the history of human battles. His military prestige was broken, his army shattered and he never recovered. Still later we are told the Lord struck him and he died and the inscription that was left on his life: “… the sins Jeroboam has committed and has caused Israel to commit” (1 Kings 14:16). God meant that we should read it still and hearkening learn the lessons, not only of a sinful life, but of a more sinful heritage of influence upon other lives. There is another picture that stands beside Jeroboam and is in some respects just as bad. It was Ahab, of whom we are told, “There was never a man like Ahab, who sold himself to do evil in the eyes of the Lord, urged on by Jezebel his wife” (1 Kings 21:25). Jeroboam made others sin and Ahab let others make him sin. Section II—Lessons Learned From Jeroboam’s LifeIn the story of Jeroboam’s life we see several aspects that provide valuable lessons. Perverted Gifts

1. We see a splendid mind with noble gifts prostituted by false ambition. How the devil loves to get the best and brightest. He chooses the very cream of human intellect, the very flower of our land as his instruments. Smartness is a curse unless balanced by principle, by high moral character, by the fear and love of God. Lost Opportunities
2. We see a splendid opportunity thrown away. What an opportunity! The founding of a kingdom, the shaping of a nation’s destiny, a chance as great as Moses or David had! And yet how utterly wasted and perverted. The deepest lesson from Solomon and his immediate followers was this, that wisdom is not sufficient without grace, without the Holy Spirit. And the greatest lesson of these lives is not to lead men to be more prudent and self disciplined, but to lead them to see that our best wisdom is to confess our foolishness and take the “Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of power” (Isaiah 11:2). God Disappointed
3. We see again a divine calling and purpose turned aside by the disobedience of a willful man. God called Jeroboam, gave him his kingdom and intended he should fulfill some great and useful work, but Jeroboam missed all. There is no doubt about God’s purpose as announced by Ahijah, yet there is no doubt about God’s disappointment. We may not put the two together, but there they both stand. Oh how often has God to cry out: “If only you had paid attention to my commands, your peace would have been like a river, your righteousness like the waves of the sea” (Isaiah 48:18). Do we doubt the power of God to carry out His purposes? No, never! Do we believe that Satan is stronger than Jehovah and able to defeat Him? No, never! God always triumphs in the end. But it is still true that God often lets you refuse your blessing if you will, and later calls another to do what you would not do and to wear the crown that you threw away. Mordecai said to his own beloved Esther, “For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place” (Esther 4:14). You can step out of His will and miss His blessings, but God will go on and bring about His end. God may have great blessings for you, a high calling for you, great possibilities for you, but be careful lest you forfeit and throw them away by refusing to walk in His highest will. Remember that you have within your heart something that came to you from God and is like God—the power to choose, the power to refuse, the throne of your will. Oh, hasten to lay it at His feet lest it should be your snare, and take Him to work in you both “to will and to act according to his good purpose” (Philippians 2:13). The Arm of Flesh
4. We see the dependence of Jeroboam upon the arm of flesh instead of upon God. The beginning of his apostasy was the building of fortifications and the raising of a mighty army. Unbelief was the secret root of all his sin. It always is. The only way to get saved is to stop everything and let Him save you. The only way to get sanctified is to cease your struggles and let Him fight the battle for you. The only way to triumph is to trust. “The one who trusts will never be dismayed” (Isaiah 28:16). While you are fretting, fussing and trying a thousand things, you have no faith. Compromise
5. His next mistake was a false political project to establish a religion for his own selfish interest. Some people join a church to help their social influence and they join the church that will help them most. There are a thousand ways in which we can make our religious work merely a means of advancing our own interests. Worse, it was a man-made religion. Man-made religions always end in becoming the devil’s religions and it was not long before the altars of Jeroboam became the altars of Baal. And this was the outcome of Jeroboam’s selfishness in daring to make God subservient to his own ambitious policy. Neglected Warnings
6. Then came the warnings of God and Jeroboam’s proud defiance of them and his persistence in his own way. There was the prophet at Bethel with his awful message and the sign that accompanied it; the prophet’s own end the next day speaking of a God that would be true to His Word at any cost; the warning that came from Ahijah that the child must die because of his father’s career of sin. All these seemed to make no impression until at last the inevitable calamity came: his army was blotted out, his power broken and the stroke of doom fell upon his own wicked head as he died under the hand of Jehovah. “Ahijah rested with his fathers” (2 Chronicles 14:1), it is said, but of Jeroboam, “The Lord struck him down and he died” (2 Chronicles 13:20), and his epitaph is, “Here lies Jeroboam who sinned and made Israel to sin.” The Bitter Fruition
7. Finally there is the bitter fruition of his actions and influence. There is one word in one of the parables of Jesus that burns with a consuming flame. It is the word Abraham uses to that wretched man on the other side of the gulf, “Son, remember” (Luke 16:25). Go away into the dark abysses of the future alone with your own heart and memory. Remember how often God helped you and loved you. Remember how you refused His salvation again and again. And if in addition to memory there should come in the next world the very victims of your sins to torment you with their presence and remind you that you were their destroyer is there need for any material fire? Is there need for any hell worse than the brimstone that a wicked man and a guilty conscience carry in the recesses of their own heart? What a picture must have come before Jeroboam at last of the splendid kingdom he had destroyed—the remembrance of the prophet of the Lord, of all that might have been, and then the awful wreck that stared him in the face too late to retrieve. Yes, and what a vision nearer home—the anguish of his brokenhearted wife, the dying boy that he loved better than his life, the curse of old Ahijah whose help he had begged in vain. These are some of the fruits of sin. But what if he could have looked down and seen the frightful centuries that followed—Jezebel and her infamies, the murderess of the prophets of the Lord, the awful crimes that filled the succeeding years, the ruin of the 10 tribes, the coming of the Assyrians, the siege of Samaria, mothers eating their own babes, the cruel cordon around the doomed city and the going forth of all the people of the land, naked, insulted and bound as captives to the lands of the heathen, never to return, and all the awful judgments of God that came at last, as He had to cast Israel out of His sight because of the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who sinned and made Israel to sin! What about our influence? This is more than sin. There is an awful picture in Genesis where God met Cain and said to him, “If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it” (Genesis 4:7). It is a fearful figure and has various interpretations, of which this is one: sin as God sees it is a crouching, wild beast. There it is gathered up ready for its fatal spring upon you. Beware how you trifle with it, for its triumph means much more than your undoing and carries in its train a curse as far-reaching as your influence, as dark as despair and as long as a lost eternity!

Chapter 2. Ahab, or the Wickedness of Weakness

Chapter 2. Ahab, or the Wickedness of WeaknessAhab son of Omri did more evil in the eyes of the Lord than any of those before him. He not only considered it trivial to commit the sins of Jeroboam son of Nebat, but he also married Jezebel daughter of Ethbaal king of the Sidonians, and began to serve Baal and worship him. (1 Kings 16:30-31)There was never a man like Ahab, who sold himself to do evil in the eyes of the Lord, urged on by Jezebel his wife. (1 Kings 21:25)There is something worse than original sin. There are originals in sin, and our text tells us that Ahab was one of these. He reached the climax of human wickedness, and carried off the palm for depravity and crime. “There was never a man like Ahab, who sold himself to do evil in the eyes of the Lord.” And he did not do it alone. There was a woman in it. Worse, even, than his wickedness was his weakness in letting another instigate him to his crimes. “Urged on by Jezebel his wife.” When you want to find the superlative degree of sin, you must find a woman. Capable at once of the best and the basest, she reaches both extremes. She raised a mortal to the skies, She drew an angel down. It is so natural to a woman to be good that when she flies from her orbit, she flies to the farthest limit and becomes a wandering star to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever. With two such, little wonder that we should find the brood of hell. The story of Ahab unfolds in a series of striking pictures. Section I—The Story of AhabA Royal Wedding

1. The first picture is that of a wedding, a royal wedding, a brilliant wedding, but a very sad one. A gentleman called upon his minister after half a dozen years of married misery, and reproached him for having told him that his marriage would be the end of all troubles. “Yes,” replied the minister, “but I did not tell you which end.” Ahab’s marriage was the wrong end of all his troubles. She was the daughter of the Sidonian king, and her people represented the highest culture, civilization and wealth of ancient times. Tyre was the commercial metropolis of the world, and, doubtless, she brought with her higher styles of fashion and life, and for a time seemed a great acquisition to the simple society of the kingdom of Israel. But God’s prohibition of marriage with the ungodly never fails to bring certain retribution, and Jezebel became the bane of Ahab’s future life and the blight of her country and her age. A Religious Revolution
2. The next picture is a religious revolution. Things are soon turned upside down. She brings not only the culture of the world, but its false religion, and above all other religions the worship of the Sidonians, so vile and debasing. Baal, the male principal, and Ashtoreth, the female principal, were worshiped as the types of power by all the vile excesses known as Phallic worship, in which the lowest passions of human nature were prostituted to the service of their gods. Jeroboam had mingled a modified form of calf worship, after the example of Aaron, with the worship of Jehovah; but Ahab and Jezebel banished the worship of Jehovah altogether, and set up idolatry as the religion of the state. A Religious Persecution
3. The third picture is of religious persecution. Relentlessly she pursued the prophets of the Lord, and Ahab, at her bidding, hunted them down, until Obadiah, a godly member of the court, with difficulty succeeded in concealing 100 of them in the caves of Carmel from her bloodthirsty ferocity. She was the Bloody Mary, the Lucretia Borgia, the Lady Macbeth of ancient Israel, and the prototype of all that is most infamous in women in every age. The Appearance of Elijah
4. Next comes a flash of warning—the sudden appearance of Elijah upon the scene. First came his awful threat in the name of the Lord, that there will he neither dew nor rain for three years and six months. He disappears as suddenly as he came, and for three years the king and his servants vainly hunt for the lost prophet whom God has hidden away until the appointed time. There is something very ignoble in the picture of Ahab at this time passing up and down the land with Obadiah, seeking not supplies for his starving people, but fodder for his mules and horses. No matter who suffered, his stable must be kept in good style and his selfish luxuries pandered to at any cost. Elijah’s Reappearance
5. The panorama moves, and again we have the sudden apparition of the prophet. Before the astonished gaze of Obadiah, he stands in the way with one star-ding message, “Go tell your master, ‘Elijah is here’” (1 Kings 18:8). With a show of courage, the king comes to meet him, and begins his harangue: “Is that you, you troubler of Israel?” (1 Kings 18:17). But the stern answer of the fiery prophet bows his proud head in mute obedience as he tells him, “I have not made trouble for Israel,… But you and your father’s family have. You have abandoned the Lord’s commands and followed the Baals” (1 Kings 18:18). Then comes the summons to the great meeting on Carmel, and the king and the prophet part. Idolatry On Trial
6. Next comes the vision of the scene on Carmel, that immortal picture, with idolatry on trial before an assembled nation. Every part of the picture is intensely dramatic: the myriads of Israel; the prophets of Baal 450 strong; the king and his court; the lonely Elijah; the trial by fire, so fitting for Baal the god of fire; the vain attempt of the deluded priests all day long to bring the answering signal, while Elijah lashed them with his withering scorn, until the sunset found them pleading, panting, exhausted and beaten by their own weapons. And then comes the short and simple prayer. The altar is flooded again with water, the 12 stones reminding them of ancient covenants. We hear the solitary appeal to heaven, we see the answering flash, the hissing flame, the consuming sacrifice, the overwhelming awe of God’s immediate presence, and then comes that shout like a thousand thunders from all the people: “The Lord—he is God!” (1 Kings 18:39). Ahab
7. But next we see the low, gross spirit of the king in contrast with the spirit of the prophet. “Go, eat and drink” (1 Kings 18:41), is Elijah’s message. He knows what Ahab wants; he is hungry. And the feast is spread in the royal tent, and with eating and drinking he forgets for the time the awful days of famine. What is Elijah doing while the miserable Ahab is eating and drinking? With his face between his knees, he is travailing in prayer, bursting asunder the bars of heaven, and bidding the rains once more descend. He prays until “a cloud as small as a man’s hand” (1 Kings 18:44) appears on the distant horizon, and soon the torrents are pouring. The prophet himself is the master of the elements and the sovereign of the hour, as he leads the van of that triumphant procession hastening to Jezreel. Jezebel
8. But now the next picture brings us to a sad reaction. Jezebel was not at Carmel that day, but Ahab tells her all, and like a lightning flash her answer is hurled at Elijah. “May the gods deal with me, be it ever so severely, if by this time tomorrow I do not make your life like that of one of them” (1 Kings 19:2). It was like a bomb-shell from the batteries of hell. For the time it paralyzed even Elijah. He just flew, as one might fly in the explosion of a shell, and never stopped until he sank exhausted under a juniper tree, a day’s journey distant. Yes, it was very sad, but it was in God’s order, for Elijah must now be withdrawn from the scene to let Ahab once more be put on trial. And so, for six years the prophet is out of sight and Ahab is on trial. Again and again God tries to bless him. He delivers Ahab from his Syrian enemies, and finally delivers up the king of Syria into his very hands. But Ahab fails to improve the opportunity, and with criminal weakness and good nature lets Ben-Hadad escape. The next message is a sentence of doom from the lips of a prophet: “You have set free a man I had determined should die. Therefore it is your life for his life, your people for his people” (1 Kings 20:42). Naboth’s Vineyard
9. Now we come to the crisis of Ahab’s crimes. Twenty-five miles from his capital, Samaria, was the charming suburb of Jezreel, where he had built his favorite palace and laid out the most beautiful estates in one of the fairest regions of the world. It was fair enough to satisfy the highest ambition; but the covetous heart is never content. As Ahab surveyed one day the fascinating view, he felt there was just one thing wanting to make his property perfect. There was one little estate that lay hard by his splendid palace which was necessary to complete the landscape. It is the property of Naboth, an old citizen, whose little villa lies adjacent to the king’s domains. Of course, all that Naboth will want to know will be that Ahab needs the property. But no, Naboth does not want to sell. In fact, he does not feel that he dare sell at any price, because the Mosaic law forbids him to alienate the inheritance of his father. Ahab is astounded, annoyed and irritated. Jezreel has lost all its charms. He returns to Samaria sulking and will not eat, drink or sleep. Jezebel finds him in a fit of the blues. It was at just such times that she was her worst. She knew how to rule men, not by forcing their will, but by gratifying it, by making herself necessary to their pleasures and convenient for their crimes. She makes light of Naboth’s objections, and has a way to settle it without further trouble: only let Ahab give her his authority and Naboth will soon be out of the way. It is a small affair of trumped up charges, a corrupt judge and jury, a lot of paid false witnesses, perjuries and lies, and in short order Naboth has been condemned for high treason and stoned to death and his family with him. The property reverts to the State for want of legal heirs. There is nobody to claim it but Ahab the king, and in the most natural way it all falls to him. How very convenient! And so next day he slips down to his estate, congratulating himself on the splendid addition to his grounds, and gathering, perhaps, a bunch of flowers from Naboth’s garden for Jezebel, his obliging queen. Suddenly an apparition stands before him that congeals all the blood in his frame, and forces from his lips the startled cry, “So you have found me, my enemy!” (1 Kings 21:20). It is Elijah. It is six years since they have met, but they meet again on time. The stern avenger exclaims, “I have found you,… because you have sold yourself to do evil in the eyes of the Lord” (1 Kings 21:20). Then follow swiftly the words of doom: The dogs that have licked Naboth’s blood will lick Ahab’s soon, and the curse of heaven will follow his bloody house. At last the blow strikes home. At last the proud sinner is broken. Ahab hurries to Samaria, covers himself with sackcloth and ashes, hides from Jezebel and all the court, and becomes a pitiful spectacle of remorse and humiliation. It seems like repentance; perhaps it is chiefly fear. But at least there is a break, and God sees it and gives it all the acknowledgment He can. “Have you noticed,” He says, “how Ahab has humbled himself before me? Because he has humbled himself, I will not bring this disaster in his day, but I will bring it on his house in the days of his son” (1 Kings 21:29). Oh, wondrous mercy of God, watching for a chance to forget and forgive, “You do not stay angry forever but delight to show mercy” (Micah 7:18). Doom Comes at Last
10. Once again the scene changes. Three years have passed and Ahab has had a short reprieve; but doom comes at last. It comes to Ahab by willful presumption and self-deception. Jehoshaphat, the king of Judah, is visiting him at Samaria. War is on with Syria, and Ahab invites Jehoshaphat to join him in the campaign. Too hastily the good king consents, but suggests at first that they shall ask counsel of the Lord. Ahab summons his false prophets, and, of course, their flattering words bid him go and promise victory. Jehoshaphat begs for another voice before the final decision; and then Ahab tells him that there is only one other prophet, Micaiah, a man whom he hates because he always prophesies failure concerning him. But in deference to Jehoshaphat, he sends for him to the dungeon where he is languishing. Micaiah appears, and tells of his vision, how the Lord has shown him that a lying spirit in the mouths of the prophets has been sent forth to his ruin. The leader of the false prophets insults and smites the good old man in the presence of the king. And then Micaiah tells another vision of Israel scattered like sheep on the mountains without a king. Ahab dismisses him in anger, and bids them hold him in prison until he returns again in peace. Then Micaiah adds his final warning, “If you ever return safely, the Lord has not spoken through me” (2 Chronicles 18:27 or 1 Kings 22:28). The die is cast. The proud king cannot well afford to retrace his steps. But evidently a deep fear and the premonition of evil have taken possession of his heart and so he enters the battle in disguise, meanly contriving to put Jehoshaphat in his place as a foil for his protection and hiding himself under false colors. The battle rages and soon Jehoshaphat, pursued by the enemy under orders to seize Ahab at any cost, is surrounded and almost captured. He is saved only when they discover their mistake about the man. Ahab seems to be about to escape scot-free, but it is easier to hide from man than from God. What is this that comes hissing through the air, and suddenly pierces an open space in the joints of his harness, as he turns himself at that very moment to open an avenue for the deadly shaft? “Someone drew his bow at random” (1 Kings 22:34), but God aimed it. Ahab is carried dying from the battlefield, his army scatter to their homes and the dogs of Samaria and Jezreel lick up his blood as it drips from the chariot where he lies. The curse has at last come home, and his sin has found him out. Thirteen years later his wicked paramour shared a more shameful fate, and the record of two lives was stereotyped on the pages of time, “There was never a man like Ahab, who sold himself to do evil in the eyes of the Lord, urged on by Jezebel his wife” (1 Kings 21:25). Section II—Lessons Learned From Ahab’s LifeTwo lessons follow from the story of this sinful life. The Climax of Wickedness “There was never a man like Ahab, who sold himself to do evil in the eyes of the Lord, urged on by Jezebel his wife” (1 Kings 21:25). Wherein did Ahab’s supreme wickedness consist?
11. He dethroned Jehovah as the God of Israel, and set the worship of idols, really devil worship, on Jehovah’s throne. His crime, therefore, was a direct act of treason against the Lord.
12. He persecuted the prophets of the Lord. God has so identified Himself with His servants that it is true, “He who rejects you rejects me” (Luke 10:16). He has guarded His servants by the most sacred sanctions. “Do not touch my anointed ones,” He says, “do my prophets no harm” (1 Chronicles 16:22). But Ahab rejected the Word of the Lord and sought to destroy Jehovah’s messengers.
13. He prostituted his power for selfish pleasure and aggrandizement. When the people were starving around him his sole object was to find fodder for his horses and mules. And when an upright citizen declined for the highest reasons to give up his patrimony he consented to his murder and the appropriation of his inheritance for his own pleasure.
14. He neglected even the opportunities that God gave him to destroy his enemies, and when Ben-Hadad was in his power, in a fit of good-natured weakness he let him go, and thus involved his kingdom in all the miseries of that monarch’s later invasions.
15. He abused and despised the mercy of God. Again and again Jehovah bore and forbore, and gave him opportunity to prove his penitence, but he only used his respite to plot still deeper crimes and manifest to full maturity the depravity of his wicked heart.
16. He hated and rejected the light. The faithful Micaiah he disliked and cast into prison, and finally in defiance of God’s warnings he rushed headlong to his doom.
17. He meanly sought to shield himself in the fatal battle of Ramoth Gilead by a cowardly disguise and put his generous friend, Jehoshaphat, in his place, exposing him to almost certain death in order to save himself. He was a treacherous friend as well as a cruel foe.
18. He permitted a wicked woman to make a tool of him for the basest ends, and to use his high authority for her wicked purposes. He even employed her to commit a bloody murder for his own benefit and then tried to shield himself from the responsibility for the crime by holding her guilty of the deed to which he was an accessory. There is scarcely an element of human baseness and aggravated wickedness which may not be traced in his character and life, and it seems indeed true that “there was never a man like Ahab, who sold himself to do evil” (1 Kings 21:25). The Wickedness of Weakness “Urged on by Jezebel his wife” (1 Kings 21:25). Perhaps he thought that it was rather his misfortune than his fault that he was so severely tempted by a stronger nature. But God holds him doubly guilty for yielding to her influence. It is an old excuse, as old as Adam, to say, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it” (Genesis 3:12).
19. Adam Not only is it a cowardly and ungenerous thing to throw the blame upon a woman, but it avails nothing. Adam should have saved his wife from herself. But because he yielded to her temptation, God has held him guilty of the ruin of his race, and it is forever true, “For as in Adam all die” (1 Corinthians 15:22). “For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners” (Romans 5:19).
20. Eli Look at old Eli, a good and blameless man; but God held him guilty of the ruin of Israel and raised up little Samuel to sound the note of judgment, simply because he let his family use his power for the corruption of the nation.
21. David And David, what have you done? Why nothing. I have been in my palace all the time. Yes, but who slew the brave Uriah in the forefront of the battle? Oh, yes, the commanding officer put him in charge of the assaulting party and he was killed, but I did not do it. Then what did Nathan mean as he thundered that sentence in his sovereign’s ear, “You are the man” (2 Samuel 12:7) and “now, therefore, the sword will never depart from your house” (2 Samuel 12:10)? And what did David mean when he cried, “Save me from bloodguilt, O God” (Psalms 51:14)?
22. Herod And who is this that sits in the banquet while the ghastly head of John the Baptist is brought on a platter by a shameless girl and laid at the feet of her monster mother? Herod, is this your crime? Why, yes, but I had to do it because she held me to my promise. Did that excuse the murderer or abate one jot of his fearful crime?
23. Pilate And you, master murderer of all the ages, with hands stained with the blood of the Son of God, Pilate, what have you done? Why, “I am innocent of this man’s blood,” he said. “It is your responsibility!” (Matthew 27:24). And they do their best to help him out. Yes, they answer, “Let his blood be on us and on our children!” (Matthew 27:25). Did that save him? Then what is the meaning of that awful legend connected with Mount Pilatus where it is said this man, driven by remorse and deserted by every friend, hurled himself from the fearful cliff to go with Judas “to his own place”? Ah, Ahab, you cannot roll over your guilt on Jezebel. Rather you shall find that your crime is only doubled by the weakness that yielded to her solicitations and involved two souls in sin and ruin. Embezzler, it will not avail you to say you stole your employer’s money to please some worthless girl. Backslider, it will not save you from perdition because the influence of some unholy friendship led you away from God. Worldling, you will plead in vain before your God that an ambitious wife, a fashionable daughter, the example and influence of your friends led you into the paths of worldliness and sin. It is through such tests that holy character is vindicated and that weakness and wickedness are unveiled. No, it will only double your eternal remorse to know that another soul must share your misery. We are placed within the reach of temptation that we may be tested and purified. The hardest temptations often come to us from our loved ones, but we must be brave enough to say “No” to the fondest affections that would betray our Lord, and like the Levites of old, “consecrate ourselves every one upon our son and our brother” (Exodus 32:29). Be True One of the finest of the old paintings represents a fair girl looking up into her lover’s face on the eve of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew and beseeching him to let her take from his buttonhole the rosette that witnessed to his Protestant faith. She knew that on the morrow it would mean his death. But he is gently putting aside her hand and looking in her eyes with a look which seems to say “While I love you better than all on earth, I love Him best of all.” God help us to be so brave and true that we will not only refuse the temptation, but save the tempter too!

Chapter 3. Jehu, or Zeal Without Godliness

Chapter 3. Jehu, or Zeal Without GodlinessCome with me and see my zeal for the Lord. (2 Kings 10:16)Yet Jehu was not careful to keep the law of the Lord, the God of Israel, with all his heart. He did not turn away from the sins of Jeroboam, which he had caused Israel to commit. (2 Kings 10:31)The story of Jehu begins back of the present record. Its first chapter was that scene on Mount Horeb where Elijah received a new commission bidding him to anoint Jehu king of Israel, Hazael king of Syria and Elisha to be prophet. Section I—The Story of JehuJehu and Ahab The second scene falls on that memorable day when Ahab rode out from Samaria to Jezreel to take possession of his ill-gotten spoil in Naboth’s vineyard. Jehu and Bidkar were his attendants that day, Jehu being the commander of the forces and Bidkar his aide. They were standing on the chariot, and perhaps driving the swift horses for Ahab, when, at Naboth’s gate, the mantled prophet suddenly appeared to confront Ahab with his crime, and that cry of anger and fear was extorted from the trembling king, “So you have found me, my enemy!” (1 Kings 21:20). That moment, doubtless, was never forgotten by Ahab’s general, and many a time its memory may have suggested to him thoughts of proud ambition in connection with that throne, which was some day to fall according to the prophet’s word. Jehu’s Anointing But time passes on while vengeance lingers, until at last Ahab dies, the dogs of Jezreel lick his blood at Naboth’s gate, his infamous queen still lives on, and his two sons, Ahaziah and Joram, successively occupy the throne. Meanwhile, the war with Syria proceeds with scarcely an interruption, and the hostile armies are now facing each other at Ramoth Gilead, which was the key to the whole region east of the Jordan, in dispute between the two kingdoms. Joram has just been wounded and obliged to leave the scene of battle for healing and rest at Jezreel, and Jehu the commander is in full charge of the campaign. Suddenly one of the sons of the prophets bursts in upon their council of war, and startles the assembled captains by his weird appearance and sudden message. Tradition tells us it was Jonah, who comes into such prominence a little later in the history of Israel. He was a disciple of Elijah, and perhaps not unlike him in his wild appearance. Demanding an interview with Jehu alone, they retire to the inner chamber, and there, without preface, the prophet pours the anointing oil on the head of Jehu and proclaims him king of Israel, with the solemn charge that he is to destroy the house of Ahab, even as the house of Jeroboam had been before. The prophet leaves as suddenly as he came, and Jehu, challenged by his fellow officers, is compelled at last to deliver to them his message. Instantly they proclaim him king, spread their military cloaks as a carpet beneath his feet, and from the roof of the house in view of the camp hail him as the king of Israel. The army takes up the cry, and the revolution has been won. The Revolution But promptness and skill are necessary to prevent resistance. Instantly the gates of the city are closed, and Jehu with a select body of soldiers starts upon a forced march to Jezreel. Fifty miles long was the way, but swiftly did the furious driver cover it, and ere long a cloud of dust at the entrance to Jezreel proclaimed to the watchman in the tower that a cavalcade was coming. Messenger after messenger is sent out to meet them, but no answer is returned save an order to the messenger to turn and follow in the rear. At length the near approach of the party enables the watchman to identify the mad driving of Jehu. Joram at once orders his chariot, and with Ahaziah, king of Judah, who is visiting him at the time, drives out to meet his general. Doubtless, he expects some message from the battle field. “Has Hazael been beaten? Has he made peace with Israel?” “Do you come in peace?” (2 Kings 9:18). “Is it peace, Jehu?” is the question. But Jehu’s answer leaves no doubt upon the royal mind. “How can there be peace,… as long as all the idolatry and witchcraft of your mother Jezebel abound?” (2 Kings 9:22). The Retribution Quickly Joram calls out to his brother sovereign, “Treachery, Ahaziah!” (2 Kings 9:23) and turns to flee. But it is too late. An arrow from Jehu’s mighty bow pierces the royal heart, and as Joram falls from his chariot Jehu orders his bleeding body to be hurled into Naboth’s vineyard that his blood may sink into the ground in the very place where Naboth died. Dashing on to the palace where Jezebel watches the whole proceeding he lifts up his eyes to behold her, painted and gorgeously arrayed, looking down upon him from the portico and taunting him in her defiant pride as a true follower of the assassin Zimri. “Have you come in peace, Zimri, you murderer of your master?” (2 Kings 9:31). She is still the untamed lioness. But the hour of her doom has come. Hurled from the window by her attendants at Jehu’s command, his horses and chariot wheels pass over her mangled body, and he drives on to the banquet hall to refresh himself with food and wine after his journey. Then he pauses to give orders for the burial of Jezebel, but the messenger returns to tell him that there is nothing left but a gnawed skull and the palms of her hands and her feet. The dogs have devoured her flesh, and the word of the Lord through Elijah has been fulfilled. The Work of Judgment But this is only the beginning. Samaria, the capital, has not yet been captured, and is in the hands of Ahab’s princes with 70 of his sons under their tutelage and care. Jehu sends a polite message to the princes of Samaria, bidding them select one of Ahab’s sons as his heir, and let him come to meet him face to face and fight out the issue for the throne. But the princes very sensibly conclude, “If two kings could not resist him, how can we?” (2 Kings 10:4). And they send back a meek message that they want no other king but Jehu, and are ready to become his loyal servants. “If,” replies Jehu, “you are on my side and will obey me, take the heads of your master’s sons and come to me in Jezreel by this time tomorrow” (2 Kings 10:6). The next morning two ghastly pyramids of skulls stood at the entrance of the gate of Jezreel like those that Assyrian kings were accustomed to rear over conquered cities. As Jehu looked at them, he shrewdly turned the blame on Ahab’s princes. “It was I who conspired against my master and killed him,” he says, “but who killed all these?” (2 Kings 10:9). Taking as a pretext for his bloody work their murder of the princes, he slays all that remains of the house of Ahab in Jezreel, his kindred and his priests, until he has left none remaining. Then sweeping on to Samaria he meets a lot of princes from Judah on the way, belonging to the house of the wicked Ahaziah, and leaves their corpses behind him, too. His entrance into Samaria is signaled by the execution of all Ahab’s courtiers and princes there, and the men that had murdered Ahab’s sons but yesterday are themselves the victims today. The Finishing Stroke But yet his commission has only been half fulfilled. He is bound to extirpate the whole brood of idolatry throughout the land. And so with the deepest subtlety he calls an assembly to the worshipers of Baal at the great temple in Samaria, announcing, “Ahab served Baal a little; Jehu will serve him much” (2 Kings 10:18). They come from the north and the south and crowd the great assembly hall, and Jehu stands before them and offers sacrifice to Baal, and when the mocking pageant is over, his appointed soldiers fall upon the multitude and mingle their sacrifices with their blood. Then the images are brought forth and burned, and the very temple made a place for the garbage and refuse of the city to be thrown, while the historian adds, “So Jehu destroyed Baal worship in Israel” (2 Kings 10:28). Jehu’s Failure But how sad is the sequel! The very next sentence turns the picture over, and we read, “However, he did not turn away from the sins of Jeroboam son of Nebat, which he had caused Israel to commit—the worship of the golden calves at Bethel and Dan” (2 Kings 10:29). He exterminated idolatry, but he did not restore the pure worship of Jehovah, but only the hybrid religion—half heathen and half divine—which Jeroboam had established and which had led Israel into all the sins for which his house was destroyed. Not only so. Jehu himself continued to live an ungodly life, and his own conduct contradicted the work which his zeal had begun, “Yet Jehu was not careful to keep the law of the Lord, the God of Israel, with all his heart” (2 Kings 10:31). And the record tells us, that while God blessed him for his fidelity to his terrible commission, yet He had to punish him and his people for his failure and his personal wickedness. “The Lord said to Jehu, ‘Because you have done well in accomplishing what is right in my eyes and have done to the house of Ahab all I had in mind to do, your descendants will sit on the throne of Israel to the fourth generation’” (2 Kings 10:30). But two verses later we see the story of the divine retribution for the national sin. “In those days the Lord began to reduce the size of Israel. Hazael overpowered the Israelites throughout their territory” (2 Kings 10:32). Such is the story of Jehu. Now for some of its lessons. Section II—Lessons Learned From Jehu’s LifeThe Words of God

1. We see an object lesson of the inevitable fulfillment of every word of God. Not one of His prophetic messages fell to the ground. To the minutest jot the words of Elijah were literally fulfilled in the death of Ahab and Jezebel and the rule of Ahab’s house. “But the word of the Lord stands forever” (1 Peter 1:25). While this is the strong security for our salvation, it is the certain warning of our doom if we presume to trifle with His great salvation and His words of warning and love. The Curse of Sin
2. We see the inexorable retribution of sin. Jeroboam, Ahab, Jezebel and Jehu all repeated the message of all history and revelation: “You may be sure that your sin will find you out” (Numbers 32:23). Even Jehu himself, the executioner of judgment upon others, became the victim and subject of God’s judgment because of his own idolatry and sin. It is as inevitable as the law of cause and effect, the law which makes fire burn and heavy bodies fall, that it shall be “ill with the wicked,” and “well with the righteous.” Let us not try to turn God’s order upside down. Judgment may linger, mercy may forbear. The mills of God grind slowly, But they grind exceeding small; Though He stands with patience waiting, With exactness grinds He all. God Uses Bad Men3. God uses the best instruments He can find for His providential purposes. Yet He does not always endorse the men He uses, but simply takes what He can in each life and turns it to the best account for His own righteous purposes. Then He deals individually with each man in punishment or reward, according to His individual character and work. Thus we find Him speaking of Cyrus, the idolatrous king of Persia, as His anointed, and saying of him, “I will strengthen you, though you have not acknowledged me” (Isaiah 45:5). Thus, indeed, He uses everyone of us in some way, either as a beacon of warning to other lives, or a lighthouse of guidance on the shores of time. Jehu was the very instrument that He needed for His present purpose of judgment, and so He called him to the terrible work of judgment. And yet He did not forget to pronounce on Jehu himself a just and righteous judgment for all his own individual sins. God’s Recompenses
3. God blesses men in the present life according to the good He sees in them, without reference to their future reward or punishment. God has a providential kingdom now in which He deals individually with men and nations according to this principle. He rewards diligence with success, and He punishes indolence with defeat and failure. Prudence, tact, energy, capacity—all these are attributes of the present life and are dealt with by God on the principle of equity, according to their merit. Therefore, there is a sense in which His covenant with His ancient people is still fulfilled in a measure in present reward. A distinguished Rabbi said the other day, with much truth, that the difference between Judaism and Christianity is that Judaism is a mortal religion, Christianity an immortal one. He meant that Judaism dealt only with the present life, Christianity was founded upon the principle of future hopes, rewards and punishments. This is true. God deals with individuals and nations now. And thus He dealt with Jehu. Because he was faithful to his commission against idolatry and the wicked house of Ahab, God promised him that his seed to the fourth generation should sit upon Israel’s throne. And yet because of his failure in other respects to be true to God, Hazael, the king of Syria, was sent “to reduce the size of Israel” (2 Kings 10:32) in the days of Jehu. He and his people were receiving from another hand the punishment which he had inflicted on the house of Ahab. His Zeal (a) The good things in Jehu for which the Lord commended him were, in the first place, his zeal. God loves an earnest soul, and abhors the indolent, self-indulgent drone. All nature unites in thrusting out and repelling the idler; and in religious life God claims our whole heart and earnestness. “I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other!” (Revelation 3:15). He would rather have the infidel than the lukewarm Christian. “If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal is God, follow him” (1 Kings 18:21). Be one thing or the other, and whatever you are, be it with all your heart and with all your might. His Energy (b) Next, Jehu was a man of energy, of force, of those qualities expressed in the phraseology of today as the “strenuous” life. The two most influential men of our age, the emperor of Germany and President Roosevelt, of Washington, stand as prominent types of these qualities and are impressing their example on the young manhood of our time. These are splendid examples, and as far as they go, God approves and blesses such qualities on the purely secular plane. And He wants them on the spiritual plane in all whom He would greatly use. God give us divine enthusiasm and Holy Spirit power in the things of eternity such as men expect in their leaders today in secular affairs. His Thoroughness (c) Then further, Jehu was thorough in his work. He did not stop half way, but carried it to a finish. When God sent Saul to exterminate the race of Amalek, he spared Agag and saved the best of the spoil to gratify his ambition. Therefore, Saul lost his kingdom. When God sent Israel under Joshua to drive out the nations of Canaan they stopped half way, and put some of them under tribute, thinking it a good source of revenue to keep the old inhabitants to do their menial work or pay them good money. But these people afterwards became their masters and oppressors. However, Jehu was not of this stamp, and had no half measures. He never stopped until he had finished his work, and blotted out the names of Baal and Ashtoreth from Israel. These were splendid qualities, and God was pleased with them and with him to that extent, and said: “Because you have done well in accomplishing what is right in my eyes and have done to the house of Ahab all I had in mind to do, your descendants will sit on the throne of Israel to the fourth generation” (2 Kings 10:30). But over against these elements of strength there was failure through elements of evil and imperfection. Failure Due to Evil and Imperfection
4. Jehu’s life was not without failure, which was due to elements of evil and imperfection. These are apparent in every human. What brings them to the surface? Ambition (a) Much of Jehu’s zeal was the result of his own ambition. He thought it was all for the Lord, but a good deal of it was for Jehu and his throne. And so, today, many a man is building up his church very much as a business man is building up his firm. But there is great danger of allowing our personal ambitions to take the place of single-hearted devotion to God, even in Christian work. Therefore, God has sent us sometimes to fail, in order to prove that we are serving Him for love and not for the glory of success. Temperament (b) Much of Jehu’s zeal was the result of temperament. There are people so constituted that they enjoy certain forms of religious work. They like to lead, they love to speak, they enjoy the triumphs of the orator and the public singer, they love to hold other minds in the spell of their magnetism, and much that goes for flaming zeal and lofty spiritual power may be largely the result of a glowing imagination and a natural power over the minds of men. Personal Unrighteousness (c) The supreme failure, however, of Jehu’s life, was his own personal unrighteousness. A sinful life will neutralize the most brilliant talents and the most successful labors in any good cause. Jehu’s own life was his bane. Alas, brother, is it yours? It will surely beat you in the end. You cannot stand against unrighteousness. Negative Work (d) Merely negative work was the fatal defect of Jehu’s reformation. His work was destructive, not constructive. He rooted out the weeds, but he did not plant the seeds. He destroyed Baal worship, but he did not lead them on to the pure worship of Jehovah. This was the fault of Elijah’s ministry. It was the law, not the gospel. You never can make men good by merely frightening them. You must draw them to better things by the expulsive power of love, and then the light will put out the darkness from it. Half Way (e) Jehu’s was only a half reformation. He went half way, no further. He destroyed the altars of Jezebel, he exterminated her priests and idols, but he took up the calf worship of Jeroboam. Worship of Baal was pure heathenism. The worship of Jeroboam and the calves was a mixed religion. It was a ritualism which God had not appointed or prescribed. It was nominally the worship of God, but it was the worship of God by forbidden rites. These calves were symbols which were copied from Aaron’s act just after they came out of Egypt. They were the Ritualists of the day. They thought they ought to have some symbol of God. He was too spiritual, too remote, for the mind of man to grasp. Therefore, the ox, the symbol of power, was suggestive of His attributes. It was just a human addition to the divine religion, and therein it stood exactly where Ritualism stands today. Ritualism Today there are lots of people who come out of the world and turn away from the service of the devil, and then go right into this very thing. It is in these things that thousands of superficial people are expending their earnestness, their time, their means, devoting themselves to something just as bad as the calf worship of Jeroboam, instead of the pure and spiritual worship of the Lord Jesus Christ. They are playing with ecclesiastical millinery and mummery while a world is perishing, and the real work of saving souls is left to others. This is the zeal of Jehu, what Dr. Guthrie once called “laborious trifling.” Spurious Lives How solemn is the lesson afforded by this example, showing us how easily we may be self-deceived and palm off upon ourselves a spurious piety which will never stand God’s testing day. It is possible for you to be much used of God as an instrument in His hand, and yet never know the fellowship of His heart. It is possible for you to do much splendid work for God, and leave behind a record of flaming zeal, and yet in the crumble of His analysis there may be but a trace of love or holiness. It is possible for you to be a master workman in His temple, and yet never know what it is to dwell with Him in the secret place of the Most High. It is possible for you to make a great stir in your religious zeal and your busy, bustling work, and yet you be a mere imitation and an empty counterfeit. A gentleman once constructed an automatic bee, made altogether of brass and wire and mechanical and electrical contrivances. He put it on a table and it buzzed and buzzed like a real bee, so that the bystanders shrank away for fear of its possible sting. He challenged anyone to detect the difference between his and the real insect. Another gentleman took up his challenge and brought a genuine bee. For a little while both buzzed around and looked just alike. Then the gentleman put a little honey in the center of the table and waited. Soon the real bee was busy at the honey. He was not buzzing so much, but he was loading his vessels with the precious sweetness and carrying it away to be used for others, while the first bee still buzzed and buzzed, making more noise, but no honey. Ah, this is the test. You may buzz in your restless, driving life, and call it Christian work, but it may be little better for you at last than the trade of the politician. The true test is to know God, to find His heart, to drink the sweetness of His love, and then to carry it to others, often unrecognized, unrequited by the age, but finding it joy enough to know Him and help His children. God help us to make the test in time. God save us from the sad story of that last character in Pilgrim’s Progress—that man who got across the river with comfort and safety, and even found his way to the gate of Heaven, but was turned back at last and bound hand and foot by the Shining Ones, while the story ends, “So I saw that there was a way to hell from the gate of Heaven, as well as from the City of Destruction.”

Chapter 4. The Prophets of Israel

Chapter 4. The Prophets of IsraelThe Lord warned Israel and Judah through all his prophets and seers: “Turn from your evil ways. Observe my commands and decrees in accordance with the entire Law that I commanded your fathers to obey and that I delivered to you through my servants the prophets.“But they would not listen and were as stiff-necked as their fathers, who did not trust in the Lord their God. (2 Kings 17:13-14)God’s three divine orders in the Old Testament theocracy were prophets, priests and kings. The priests were often corrupt, and the kings, as a rule, were bad. Only three of Judah’s rulers after Solomon wholly walked in the ways of David, and all the kings of Israel were corrupt. It seemed a punishment upon the nation for asking for a king, instead of accepting Jehovah as their true and only Sovereign. The True Prophets The prophets were a royal line of faithful witnesses for God, from the day of Moses, who was the first great prophet, through Samuel, who organized the schools of the prophets, and Nathan, who was a friend of David and not afraid to warn him boldly when he sinned, down to the later and darker times of Elijah and Elisha. They were the very bulwark of the nation, and a wicked king might well say of one of them: “My father! My father! The chariots and horsemen of Israel!” (2 Kings 2:12). Still later they became God’s messengers to the far distant ages, and their writings have come down to us, beginning with Jonah and covering all the later centuries of the changeful history of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. We will introduce this noble line by referring to the first two examples in the reign of Jeroboam. The first of these was Ahijah, and the second a nameless prophet, who came originally from Judah, but prophesied at Bethel, and afterwards perished for an act of thoughtless disobedience to the commandment of Jehovah. Section I—The Prophet AhijahThis venerable servant of God began his ministry under Solomon, and it was he who bore to Jeroboam the announcement of his call to be the first king of the 10 tribes. Jeroboam’s Call The incident was dramatic. Meeting the young officer of Solomon’s kingdom on the open highway, suddenly, after the dramatic manner of ancient prophets, he seized his outer garment and tore it into 12 pieces, proclaiming the rending of Solomon’s kingdom into 12 tribes. Handing back 10 of the fragments, he explained it by declaring that the Lord would give him these 10 tribes as his kingdom. Then, in the most solemn manner, he warned him of the blessings of fidelity and obedience and the certain retribution that would come to him and his kingdom if they disobeyed and provoked the Lord. Ahijah went his way, and in due time his prophecy was fulfilled and Jeroboam sat upon the throne of Israel, forgetting, however, and disregarding the warnings which preceded his crowning. Sin and Judgment Ahijah calmly waited as the years went by, and at length began to come the turning of the tide. Jeroboam’s evil reign was ripening for judgment. His own family was the first to feel the stroke, and his little son was already lying on a bed of painful sickness and all human helps and hopes had failed. Then the wicked king thought of his long-neglected God and the venerable prophet that had first called him to his high position. But he dared not face him directly. So, with a cunning more offensive to God because of the insult it implied upon His all-seeing intelligence, he ventured to send his wife in disguise to wait upon the old prophet and ask him about the recovery of the child. Ahijah was old and blind, but his blind eyes could see much farther than the brightest human vision. The moment the queen entered his presence he called her by name, and uttered the fearful sentence which had long been waiting the hour of judgment to arrive. He told her of her husband’s crimes and sins, warned her of the ruin that was coming upon his house. Then he informed her that as soon as she re-entered her palace her child would die, and would be the only member of Jeroboam’s house to receive even the honor of a decent burial. With what a heavy heart that wretched mother must have hurried from the prophet’s chamber, dreading to cross the threshold of the palace, where her coming could only bring the knell of death. And yet she also possesses a mother’s fondness, almost daring to cling to the lingering hope that perhaps the prophet might be mistaken. At last she ventures in. But the bosom upon which she throws herself is still, and the lips that meet her kiss, cold in death. The prophet is right and the hour of doom has only begun. The story has already been told how that judgment hastened in the destruction of Jeroboam’s army, and finally the stroke of God upon his own head. God’s Two-Edged Sword Our present purpose is to draw the deep spiritual lesson of the prophet’s ministry, and surely it is this, that the same word of God may become at once our blessing or our bane. “To the one we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life” (2 Corinthians 2:16). It is the word of Ahijah that set Jeroboam upon his throne; it was the same word that sentenced him to his doom. So still, it is God’s sharp two-edged sword, and woe betide everyone that trifles with it. Far better he had ne’er been born. Who lives to doubt, or lives to scorn. OpportunityThere is a legend of a youth who started down the avenue of life with bounding step and laughing eye. As he tripped along the shining way there met him from time to time an angel form bearing upon his brow the name “Opportunity,” and who, holding in his hand a vase of lovely flowers, bade the wayfarer accept them, telling him that they contained the pledge of deepest spiritual blessing. But the reckless youth hastened on, for the way seemed long and bright and he thought, “There will be other opportunities; why should I linger now?” And so the years rolled by. A score of times the angel was passed with neglect and scorn, and only once in a while did the foolish traveler stop to notice that in his left hand the angel held a shining dart concealed under the folds of his mantle. At last the air began to grow cold and chill. The leaves were falling around the traveler’s feet. The birds had ceased to sing, and many a warning seemed to say that his journey was reaching a crisis. Suddenly he found his way obstructed. Reaching out his hand, a cold gate stood across the path, and as he looked at the inscription upon it he shuddered, as he spelled out the dreadful word “Death.” The end had come at last. Shuddering and almost fainting, he sank upon the ground, when hissing through the air a dart struck him, followed by another and another. As he lay wounded and dying in agony, he noticed that these darts were flung by the angel forms that he had scorned in the years gone by. They were the opportunities he had despised and wasted, and now they were visiting him with bitter retribution. So the same Ahijah that brought to Jeroboam the grandest opportunity of history sent him the most terrific sentence that ever fell from heaven on a single human soul. That word is living still, and still it meets each one of us with its priceless opportunities, with its eternal possibilities and with its awful responsibilities. It is for you to say whether it will be to you the word of life or the sentence of death. Section II—The Prophet of BethelThis incident is strange and solemn. It is the story of a nameless prophet. His very identity has not come down to us. His life seems like one of those little black crosses that stand on some of the cliffs of the Alps, marking the spot where some reckless traveler fell into the abyss below. Just a little black cross with no name upon it, but one solemn word written with mystic fingers, and speaking to us from its weird and warning front, “Beware! Beware!” A Message From God The story is a thrilling one. When Jeroboam was establishing his false calf worship at the shrine of Bethel, suddenly there appeared before the altar at which the king was officiating, a prophet from Judah, stern and silent. He was robed in the weird garments of his calling. The prophet publicly announced that the day would come when a king named Josiah should burn upon that altar the bones of the priests who had officiated before it. And in token of the truth of his words, he declared that the altar should be rent in the presence of the worshipers, and that the ashes should be sprinkled upon the ground. No sooner said than done, and, lo, as he stood, the altar was riven before the very face of the king and the ashes scattered at his feet. Instinctively Jeroboam reached out his hand either to strike or stop the old prophet, but the hand was stricken with paralysis and he was unable even to recall it to his side. Then his proud heart yielded, and he cried for mercy, and in answer to the prophet’s prayer his withered hand was healed. Deceived He now invited the prophet to come to his palace and accept of his hospitality, but the old man had been warned to enter no household in all that wicked land, but to return in silence as he had come. On his way, however, he was waylaid by another prophet who was desirous, either from vanity or some unworthy motive, to entertain him. When the old man refused as he had refused Jeroboam, the other told him that he, too, was a prophet, and had just received a message from an angel of the Lord bidding him come and meet the servant of God and take him home to his house. The old prophet was deceived, and believing his message, went with him. Before their evening meal was ended, the Spirit of God came upon the seducing prophet, and he was compelled to declare to his guest that because he had disobeyed the voice of the Lord, he should never return to his home, but should perish through the judgment of God. The next morning he saddled his ass and stole homeward, but a lion met him in the way. After having slain the prophet, the lion stood guard over his body, touching neither his corpse nor the ass that had borne him, but standing there in silence like an angel of God, and certainly God’s messenger of judgment. The Deceiver’s Remorse When tidings came of this terrible tragedy, the prophet that had deceived him hastened to take the remains and bury them, in his own sepulchre. Then he left as his last order with his family, that when he should die they should bury him in the grave of the prophet whom he had deceived and wronged and whom, too late, he found himself unable to save. We are not told of the bitter tears he shed, of the vain remorse, of the sorrow, of the shadow that settled upon his own life and the awful sense of his having become the murderer of one of Jehovah’s servants, when he had perhaps, lightly thought that he was only doing him a hospitable kindness. And so the lesson has come down to us, and surely its point is not difficult to trace and its application is just as vital today as in the days of Jeroboam. Implicit Obedience Surely, its one message is that which God gave long ago to Joshua as the key to Canaan, “Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go” (Joshua 1:7). Implicit obedience! Surely, this is the mystic message that blazes from that little black cross yonder on the heights of Bethel. Be Not Deceived Yes, we may be utterly sincere, we may not mean to disobey, we may be honestly deceived, but it does not save that ship from wreck to have mistaken the light or allowed its compass to be turned aside by some other attraction. There will be inevitable retribution both in the natural and moral world, and God has said “Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows” (Galatians 6:7). There was much that was good and glorious in the prophet of Bethel. He had been fearless and faithful in executing the divine commission against Jeroboam and his altar. He had been firm in refusing the hospitality of the king, and in this he was eminently wise, for it is vain to expect the worldly to listen to our warnings when we sit down with it at its entertainments and enter into partnership with it in its unholy gains. Especially must the ministry of God keep itself unspotted from the world and stand uncompromised with evil in every way. And he had been most godlike in his mercy in healing the penitent king and rightly representing the goodness, as well as the severity of God. As an Angel of Light All this was good and godlike. But all this could not excuse his weakness and incautiousness in listening to the voice of the seducer. True again, the deceiver was a prophet, but prophets may deceive, and we have no business to listen to even the most wise and eloquent words of ministers and messengers of God, unless they are according to the Word of God. It is the pulpits of our land today that are most perilously deceiving the flock of God, and no human authority or influence should have the slightest weight with us unless we find back of it in our Bibles a “thus saith the Lord.” No, even though we may be told as he was, that an angel from heaven has sent the message, even Paul has told us that “even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned!” (Galatians 1:8). No vision, no revelation, can have any weight against the Word which God has already given to us, and by which all truth must be judged and all destiny decided. The deception was perhaps, kindly meant, but it is by mistaken kindness still that souls are often misled and forever lost. Your polite invitation to some worldly entertainment, your well-meant introduction to some ungodly friend may be the turning point for ruin in the life of someone that you love, and may yet fill your own heart with deepest sorrow. Vain Regrets Surely behind the picture of that prophet of Bethel and his seducer there is a vision which we may be pardoned for imagining. Could you have seen that brokenhearted man as he hastened to pick up the corpse of his late guest? Could you have seen him, fearless of the lion that stood growling beside it, as he gathered it up tenderly in his arms and bore it to his own burying place? Could you have heard his bitter lamentations as he cursed his own mistaken kindness? Could you have seen his overshadowed life as he went down to the grave, with but one thought, to lay his bones beside those of the man he had ruined, you would, doubtless, have seen a picture that in no way exaggerated this description. And yet such a sorrow awaits every soul that in any way allows itself to become instrumental in the ruin of another’s life. It may seem a trifling matter to lead a pure young life aside from the paths of innocence. But, oh some day when you come face to face—as you will—with the fruits of your life, when you see the anguish, the despair, the terrible ruin which you have wrought, dear friend, it will be a worse hell than your own. Oh, man of selfish and unholy pleasure, it may seem very amusing for a time to dally with temptation and lead some innocent and trusting life to take the first step in the downward course; but go down to the morgue and look upon that pale young face so cold in death. Look at the oozing froth from that mouth, and think of the anguish with which she hurled her desperate life into the oblivion she sought in vain. Over the brink of it, Picture it, think of it, Dissolute man: Lave in it, drink of it then if you can. A few months ago at Old Orchard [a campground in Maine], I met a woman who asked me if I had not published once the incident of a young girl who had asked her mother on her deathbed to bring her the ball dress that had been given her as a bribe to keep her from joining the church after a recent revival. She had worn it once and taken the chill which ended her young life. But just before she died she made them bring it, and fondling it for a little as it lay before her, she said, “Pretty dress. Keep it and look at it every year on the anniversary of my death and remember that it cost me my soul.” The lady who asked the question then told me that this incident actually occurred at her own home in Nova Scotia, and the girl referred to belonged to a neighboring family living hard by her residence, and the facts as stated really occurred. It seemed to give a strange and fearful vividness to the story to have it thus confirmed. The anguish of that mother was greater than even the anguish of that dying child. Would the load ever be lifted from that broken heart or that accusing voice ever cease to speak, “It cost me my soul”? Oh, think of it, mothers, when you discourage religious decision in your children. Oh, think of it, Christian friends, when you gaily trifle with serious things and dispel religious earnestness from the minds of your friends. Oh, think of it, selfish tempter, when you play with the virtue and the moral principle of your associates. Oh, think of it, companion, when you have taken some young and thoughtless friend to the unholy amusement, to the doubtful party, to the place where a sainted mother would not have one go, and remember that some day God will hold you responsible even for the sins of others, if you allow yourself to become the tempter. You may mean it in kindness, as the old prophet did, but you will curse yourself for it and perhaps your perdition will be aggravated a thousandfold by the maledictions of the souls that you sink with you to everlasting ruin. “Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked” (Galatians 6:7). Be not deceivers, for greater even than your sin is the sin of Jeroboam, that he “caused Israel to commit” (1 Kings 14:16).

Chapter 5. Jonah and His Message to Our Times

Chapter 5. Jonah and His Message to Our TimesHe was the one who restored the boundaries of Israel from Lebo Hamath to the Sea of the Arabah, in accordance with the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, spoken through his servant Jonah son of Amittai, the prophet from Gath Hepher. (2 Kings 14:25)He answered, “A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a miraculous sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now one greater than Jonah is here.” (Matthew 12:39-41)Jonah was the first of the prophets whose writings have come down to our times. His place is, therefore, unique and preeminent. The story of his life was probably written by himself, and the fact that he could write a story with such humiliating disclosures, and yet with such extraordinary candor, goes far to redeem the reputation which he so sadly lost. Jonah means “a dove.” Therefore, it is not unlikely that he was constitutionally timid like Jeremiah in a later age, and for that very reason selected by God for the severest ministries, on the principle that when God has to say anything harsh He never wants a messenger who could color it by any personal severity or unkindness. Section I—The Story of JonahJonah was the son of Amittai, and a native of Gath Hepher, a town of the tribe of Zebulun mentioned in the book of Joshua. This fact gives a coloring of probability to the Jewish tradition that he was identical with the son of the widow of Zarephath, which place we know was near the borders of Zebulun, and that it was he who was raised from the dead through Elijah’s ministry. Another Hebrew tradition also identifies him with the prophet sent by Elisha to anoint Jehu to be king of Israel. Under Jeroboam II We pass, however, to the region of certainties when we come to our text, and find that Jonah was a contemporary—at least, in his later ministry—of Jeroboam II, the third of Israel’s kings after Jehu, and the most powerful and aggressive of all the rulers of the 10 tribes. Under his victorious reign the coasts of Israel were enlarged to their ancient limits and the lost territories of former monarchs recovered from the nations round about. The success of Jeroboam’s brilliant career is distinctly attributed to the prophesying of Jonah, who was the counselor and friend of this powerful king, and, doubtless, recognized as the religious leader of his time. Had Jonah’s life ended with this first part of his ministry his name would have gone down to posterity as one of the most illustrious prophets and honored servants of Jehovah in the whole prophetic line. But at this point his life experienced a vital crisis. A new commission summoned him to a new field, and new elements changed his whole future career and his final reputation. Nineveh A mightier power than Israel was rising on the eastern horizon. It was the kingdom of Assyria, whose splendid capital, Nineveh, had become the most magnificent city of the world. Its stupendous ruins are still the wonder of the student and archaeologist. Already it was evident that this world-wide monarchy was to be a menace of Israel’s future, and Jonah naturally in his selfish patriotism had thought of Nineveh with feelings only of hostility and alarm. What a revelation, therefore, it must have been to him to receive a message bidding him to go to Nineveh as the messenger of Jehovah’s mercy. Every fiber in his being rose in protest and rebellion. The idea was intolerable, and hurrying away under the impulse of the hour, he fled from the hateful task, and, as he imagined, from the presence of the Lord. The rest of the story is too familiar to need to be told in detail. His Flight and Recovery We all know how readily the devil’s providences were found awaiting him at Joppa. How easily he sank into insensibility and lay asleep in the hold of the ship. How God’s police followed close upon the fugitive until the very heathen were terrified and became his reprovers. How conscience at last awakened him, and compelled him to sit as the judge upon his own case, and condemn himself to a vicarious death to save his innocent companions. We know how mercy was tempered with judgment and the sea monster became his refuge and deliverer. How his deep penitence was at last rewarded by God’s forgiving mercy and he came forth from the depths of the sea like a man resurrected from the very grave. How once more the commission was renewed and the prophet was ready to obey. How his ministry in Nineveh was crowned with a success unprecedented in all ages and the greatest revival ever known swept over a heathen empire, until from the king on the throne to the very cattle in the stall the land was covered with the sackcloth of repentance. How the mercy of God met the penitent prayer of the people of Nineveh and the threatened judgment was averted. And then how Jonah came back again to his old self-life and once more rebelled against the will of Jehovah. And finally how God met him with longsuffering patience and exhibition of His compassion that has, perhaps, no equal in any Bible scene. His Second Failure At last the story ends with the strange spectacle of the penitent and angry prophet, blaming God because He had blasted Jonah’s reputation by not destroying Nineveh according to His word. Along with this is the loving Father, delighting in mercy and telling His angry child how reasonable it was that He should have compassion upon the little children and the very dumb brutes of the doomed city. The curtain falls with this sad picture of Jonah’s disgrace. The only comfort left us is to go behind the scenes and see Jonah himself a little later telling the story of his own shame and magnifying Jehovah’s grace. This is somewhat like Simon Peter, who tells us through Mark, in the Gospel left us by that evangelist, his secret in all the humbling details, how he had denied his blessed Master and been loved and forgiven. There is no comment, but the simple telling of the story by Peter is enough to let us know how deeply he repented. The story of Jonah is a companion picture, and we can forgive the prophet when we see the honest candor with which he puts himself in the dust that God may be glorified. Section II—Lessons Learned From Jonah’s LifeThe lessons of this singular life are intensely practical.

1. A Revelation of Human Character and the Deep Deceitfulness of Sin Self-Deception So long as everything was agreeable and prosperous Jonah was all right. The deep self-life was hidden, as it often is, through many years of distinguished usefulness. That self-life was disguised under the appearance of lofty patriotism, and it would be most humiliating if we could only see how much that goes under the name of lofty virtue is but a cloak for some secret ambition. The heart, even of many a disciple of Christ, is deceitful above all things, and needs the deeper sanctifying grace of the Spirit to reveal and take away its hidden selfishness. The Downward Course We see also in the story of Jonah the alarming stages of spiritual declension. How swiftly the backsliding prophet went down the terrible incline when once he started! First, there was the impulse of disobedience. Jonah rose up. Next, the desire to get away from God, to flee from the presence of the Lord. Next, the favorable providence that smoothed his descent. He found a ship going to Tarshish. Next, the decisive committal of willful disobedience. He paid his fare. Next, the downward course. He went down into the ship. And next, and saddest of all, the deep spiritual slumber even in the midst of judgment and when all around him were aroused and filled with alarm. “But Jonah had gone below deck, where he lay down and fell into a deep sleep” (Jonah 1:5). This is the progression of evil. Oh, let us beware of the first wrong step. It is so easy to go on and go down when once we begin. Would Not Die But this is not all. Through God’s great faithfulness in judgment and His longsuffering in forgiving, Jonah was restored and recommissioned. And for a time it seemed as if the old self-life had died. But sin is more deceitful than the lurking viper under the beautiful bed of flowers. Scarcely had his work at Nineveh been crowned with its first blessing, when again his old self-life reasserted itself. We find Jonah as much alive as before, throwing his own shadow over his sacred ministry. He began actually rebuking God for having forgiven the penitent Ninevites, until Jehovah had to cover his work with the shadow of disgrace and leave the most successful ministry ever known under an eclipse of humiliation and failure. Let us not congratulate ourselves on our easy virtues, our agreeable services or our successful ministries, until God has tested us in the depths of our being and we have proved that we are serving God, not for our selfish honor or pleasure, but because we love to do His will.
2. A Revelation of the Character and Love of God Back of Jonah’s selfishness and Nineveh’s sin shines the sublime vision of God’s grace. Jonah seems to have known this long before and rather disliked it, for we find him saying: “O Lord, is this not what I said when I was still at home? That is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity” (Jonah 4:2). Strange, is it not, to find a poor sinner finding fault with God for being so kind? But Jonah was a bigot, and he wanted a God that he could use on occasion to gratify his dislikes to his enemies, taking it for granted, of course, that he had a sort of prescriptive right to His favor. Divine Mercy But it was well for Jonah that God was so merciful. The time came when he had to fall back upon that longsuffering, and from the depths of hell cry for mercy upon his own soul, and he found it. How graciously God tempered the chastening of His disobedient child with loving kindness and tender mercy! How thoughtfully He prepared that monster to receive him when he sank amid the yawning waves! How kindly He offered him a second chance to retrieve his lost honor and accomplish the work he had refused. And oh, how gentle and surpassing the loving kindness with which he forgave repentant Nineveh! Is there anything more touching and beautiful than the outburst of His heart when Jonah reproached Him for His mercy to Nineveh? “But Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?” (Jonah 4:11). What a picture of God’s compassion for the helpless children! Oh, it is these for whom His heart aches amid the horrors of heathenism. It is the children of the drunkard whom His great heart pities. And not only so. There is another touch of exquisite pathos—His compassion for the dumb brutes in the stalls of Nineveh. God could not endure the thought of their helpless anguish. Those four words with which the book of Jonah ends shed a luster over the whole creation, unspeakably beautiful: “Many cattle as well” (Jonah 4:11). Wherever there is a heart filled with the Holy Spirit and the Spirit of Jesus we shall find the same mercy toward the lower orders of creation, and the same unwillingness to inflict a needless pain upon the helpless creatures over whom God has given to us dominion in this lower world. Shame upon our humanity that we have so often abused it. The true child of God will be ever kind, and his very horse and dog will know that he is a Christian.
3. A Revelation of the Gospel and the Cross of the Lord Jesus Christ Jonah and Jesus Our Lord Himself has borne a conclusive testimony to the authenticity of the story of Jonah. The Higher Critics can be safely referred to the testimony of the Master. He especially honored the old Hebrew prophet as the very type of His own death and resurrection. “As Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matthew 12:40). The Substitute But we find even a finer foreshadowing of the atonement in the vivid picture given us of Jonah’s tragedy when the storm was raging and the seamen were terrified and helpless. It was Jonah himself that suggested the vicarious sacrifice that alone could save them. “Pick me up and throw me into the sea,… and it will become calm” (Jonah 1:12). Oh, how like it was to the message of the Savior, to the men who came with swords and spears to arrest Him and His disciples. “If you are looking for me, then let these men go” (John 18:8). He was the Substitute, and when He was cast into the sea of sin, lo, the waves were still, and a lost world found peace and a haven of rest. The sacrifice of Jesus Christ is the key to the story of Jonah, as well as the story of lost humanity. The artist Turner on one occasion invited a number of friends to see an unfinished painting. The canvas was a scene of confused tints and clouds of light and shade; but there was nothing intelligible about it. Suddenly the artist took his brush and touched the picture with a little bit of crimson, when at once the whole picture became plain. That little bit of color gave the viewpoint to all the rest and the scene was plain and striking. So the cross of Calvary has given the true interpretation to all the facts of history and all questions that affect the destiny of man. But there is a still deeper lesson of crucifixion in Jonah’s story. It was the crucifixion of Jonah himself. If we believe in a crucified Savior we must be willing to be crucified men and women. The real trouble with poor Jonah was that he was not fully crucified. If the Jewish tradition about him was true, surely he ought to have been dead enough at the beginning, for had he not been raised from the dead by the prophet Elijah? But there are people that have more lives than one, and Jonah’s tenacity of life seemed boundless. It was the self-life of the prophet that met him, and rebelled against the commandment of his God, and sent him off to Tarshish in a pet. And, therefore, God had to bury him in the sea. Very Much Alive Jonah came back apparently dead and resurrected, but lo, the first return of success brings him back again to all his old vitality. He sits under his withered gourd at Nineveh, quarreling with earth and heaven because he has not had his own way. Therefore, the deepest teaching of the New Testament about our spiritual life is the necessity of going with our crucified Lord into death and resurrection. We have no right to sing, “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,” unless we are willing to add, “through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Galatians 6:14). Therefore, in the history of God’s ancient people there were two chapters of death and resurrection. The first one was at the Red Sea. They passed through the floods, as a symbol of death to Egypt and the world which they left behind them. The second one was at the Jordan. They were buried once more in symbol, as the gateway by which alone they could enter the Land of Promise, Both of these types tell us of the utter need of our entering into that mystic fellowship with our Lord, which the Apostle has described in Galatians 2:20 : “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
4. A Revelation of God’s Purpose of Salvation for the Lost A Foreign Missionary Jonah stands as the forerunner of the foreign missionary. It was not the first time God had intimated His purpose of world-wide salvation. To Abraham He had spoken of a blessing for all the families of the earth. To Moses He had sworn, “Nevertheless, as surely as I live and as surely as the glory of the Lord fills the whole earth” (Numbers 4:21). Elisha had received Naaman, the Syrian, among the subjects of God’s healing love and power, and even Elijah had bestowed his blessing on a daughter of Sidon. But Jonah was the first who definitely undertook a real mission to the heathen, and it was the most successful mission the world has ever seen. What a spectacle it was to behold an entire nation at the feet of God in penitence and prayer. God hasten the day when the message of His coming shall once more bear such instant and glorious fruit. It is very touching to find how far the heart of God was in advance of the spirit of His own people. It was the picture of Jonah more than anything else that stood in the way of the salvation of Nineveh, and it has been the selfishness of the Church herself that has kept back the gospel from the heathen. The effect of such a spirit may best be seen in the miserable failure of Jonah. And the effect of selfishness today is, alas, but too apparent in the decay of our modern Christianity and the corrupting of her manna because she has hoarded it for herself alone. A witty painter once drew a picture of what he called a decaying church. In the foreground stood a splendid edifice with no sign of decay about its magnificent architecture. Through the open portals the eye could see within that all was still more splendid. The spacious building was crowded with wealthy and fashionable worshipers and everything bore evidence of prosperity and popularity. But at the door was found the key to the picture. Over the costly silver plate on which the offerings of the worshipers were piled, there hung a little foreign missionary collection box, cheap and evidently neglected. On closer inspection you could see that the slot through which the coins were supposed to flow was all overgrown with spiders’ webs. That was the decaying church and such a church deserves to decay. Section III—Special Lessons From Jonah’s Life1. It reminds us of the people who are good, and even useful, so long as things suit them, but who go to pieces the moment you cross them.
5. It is a suggestive picture of the devil’s providences which are ready to fit right into our sinful plans, but which we are always extremely safe in refusing.
6. It reveals to us the dishonesty of the devil, who lets us pay our fare, and then drops us in the middle of our journey into the jaws of destruction.
7. It affords us a vision of God’s police. All things serve His might, and not a wind blows and not a wave flows, but is on some errand of His wise and gracious providence. God can find you and bring you back. Do not venture too far.
8. It reminds us how often even sinners put to shame God’s sinful children and wake them up, as the sailors of Tarshish woke up Jonah with amazement and fear.
9. It shows us how the return of a backslider will often bring sinners to God, even as Jonah’s awakening led those rude men to repentance and conversion.
10. It painfully reminds us of how people that claim to be dead are still very much alive, and how much our work for God is hindered by our throwing our own shadow over it, as Jonah did at Nineveh.
11. God often has to dishonor His servants to save them, and the work we do for selfishness will bring us no reward. Jonah did much good to others, but he lost it all himself. If you are preaching the gospel or working in the Church of God for ambition or selfishness in any way you shall not only lose your reward, but bring upon yourself at last exposure and humiliation.
12. Finally, we cannot afford to trifle with God. Oh backslider, return! Oh fugitive from duty, do come back to God! Oh worldling, playing with temptation, beware! Behold the goodness and severity of God. A young girl one day ventured to grasp a live wire that was hanging from a post. She did it in playful fun. Instantly a fearful scream proclaimed the fact that her hand was fastened to that burning current and she was helplessly in its grasp. The other hand was quickly raised to loosen her stiffened fingers, and it, too, was caught, and there she hung in agony and helplessness. Her mother rushed to her side to pull her down, but she was flung far off by a shock communicated from the body of the girl. She seemed lost, indeed. At the last moment a young man who understood took an axe and severed the wire by striking it against the post. The current was broken and the girl fell swooning on the ground. Her life was saved, but her hands were cinders for the rest of her days. Don’t play with live wires. There is mercy, boundless mercy. You can have God’s love, you can all have it, but you cannot trifle with it.

Chapter 6. Elijah, the Prophet of Judgment

Chapter 6. Elijah, the Prophet of JudgmentThe king asked them, “What kind of man was it who came to meet you and told you this?“They replied, “He was a man with a garment of hair and with a leather belt around his waist.“The king said, “That was Elijah the Tishbite.” (2 Kings 1:7-8)This is the picture that has come down to us of the prophet of Horeb. Outward forms are not infrequently the figures and symbols of inward character. The very forms of the dove and the lamb prepare us for their gentleness, and one look at the hog and the tiger suggests their native grossness and ferocity. The rainbow and the sunshine are the types of loveliness and brightness, while the stormy cloud presages in its very terrors the calamity which it brings. Elijah was true to his portrait. A rugged child of nature, wrapped in a rude sheepskin mantle, bearing upon his countenance the lines of solitude and severity, he was a fitting type of the dispensation of law and the ministry of judgment. He was at the same time a transition figure. He belonged to both the old and the new dispensations. It was his to gather up the meaning and the message of the past and at the same time introduce a better future. His greatest work was to anoint Elisha to be prophet in his room and to accomplish that work of gentleness and grace for which he could only prepare the way by warning and judgment but which he himself could never bring. In like manner it was also prepared that he along with Moses, twin messenger of the same law, should afterwards be chosen to introduce the Son of God on the Transfiguration Mount. Section I—The Story of ElijahElijah’s story is too familiar to need to be retold at length. A few rapid touches will recall the outline. Like a meteor flash in a midnight sky, he appeared from the solitudes of Gilead in the darkest hour of Ahab’s reign. And like the report of the same meteor, comes the sudden announcement of his message of judgment upon the idolatrous kingdom, that “there will be neither dew nor rain in the next few years” (1 Kings 17:1). Next we find him appropriately among the ravens by a little brook on the confines of Syria. These birds of evil omen associated with the desolating flood were to him the Lord’s providers through the days of famine. He alights next, as suddenly, in a village of Sidon far west on the Mediterranean coast, and there claims the hospitality and trust of a poor widow. Afterwards he restores to life, in recompense, her only son, said by Hebrew tradition to have been the prophet Jonah. A little later the apparition again startles Israel and Obadiah is met on the way by the prophet with the dramatic message, “Go tell your master, ‘Elijah is here’” (1 Kings 18:8). Then comes the summons to the great assize on Mount Carmel, the appeal to heaven, the ignominious failure of Baal, the answer by fire to Elijah’s prayer, the defeat and judgment of idolatry, the execution of Baal’s prophets, the return of the nation to Jehovah, the opening heavens and descending rain with Elijah himself dashing in front of Ahab’s chariot amid the tempest and storm like a courier of heaven and a very spirit of the elements for more than 20 miles to the entrance of Jezreel. Then came that terrible reaction which so often comes to human nature after some terrible tension of all its powers and even after some supreme hour of triumph. Elijah flees at Jezebel’s fiery threat. Like some poor, limp, broken body that had fallen from an awful height, he lies under the juniper tree, asking only that he may die and end his discouragement and misery. We know the story, how God nursed him back and then sent him to Horeb to receive a new revelation, to learn from the wild elements of the earthquake, the whirlwind and the fire the failure of the ministry of judgment, to hear in the still small voice the true secret of power and then to go forth and commit to other hands his unfinished work—the judgment part to Jehu and Hazael, and the better work of grace to Elisha, the prophet of mercy. Three times more we see him during the 10 years that follow. Once he appears again to Ahab, as the avenger of Naboth’s murder. Next to Ahab’s son, the wicked Amaziah, after he had consumed his messengers, with the announcement of his death. And then comes the last walk with his disciple, Elisha, and that final hour so unspeakably glorious when the heavenly chariots bore him to his God. Section II—Lessons Learned From Elijah’s LifeBack of his dramatic life there stand out great principles and lessons of the most practical and perpetual value and importance. Judgment

1. He was the messenger of judgment. He was the representative of law. He was the witness for righteousness and holiness in a wicked age. He stood for conviction of sin and personal repentance as the condition of forgiveness and mercy. He was like the tempest that purifies the air. He was like the winter which leads up to spring. He was like the deep plowshare that prepares the soil for the sower and the seed. He was like the geological ages of fiery convulsion which prepared the way for making this globe a habitable planet, and led on in due time to the green earth and the waving harvest field. It was necessary that some hand must strike the blow that would wake up in Israel the voice of slumbering conscience and show the wickedness of Ahab and Jezebel in its true character. This was Elijah’s ministry. In the same spirit John the Baptist came later to prepare the way for the Savior and lead men through repentance to salvation. Still the conviction of sin is essential before the soul can understand the revelation of forgiveness; and still, in the deeper experience of the sanctified heart, there must be another conviction, not of sin, but of sinfulness, before the soul is ready to receive the Holy Spirit and the abiding presence of the Lord. Beloved reader, have you passed through the gates of conviction? Have you seen sin as God sees it? Our milk and water age is rapidly coming to the obliteration of sharp moral lines, and it needs as much as ever the message of Elijah. God never passes by sin. It must be recognized. It must be dealt with, either in your Substitute or on your head. God give us in our hearts and in the spiritual work of our time a true ministry of conviction, of righteousness and of a quickened conscience. Grace
2. He was the pioneer of grace. He was permitted to fail as Moses did before him, to show that law will ever be inadequate alone to make men better, and that judgment may be destructive, but only grace can be constructive and permanent. The three symbols of the vision on the mount, the earthquake, the whirlwind and the fire, were but symbols of the threatenings and terrors of his ministry and their failure to bring a true reformation. The prophets were dead, but their spirit was still alive. The people had shouted for Jehovah today, but they would be reveling tomorrow in the orgies of Jezebel’s groves. Something deeper was needed, and that still small voice that pierced his soul and broke his heart was the type of that better ministry which Elisha was to introduce and which the Greater than Elisha, the Savior Himself, was to consummate. And so in our experience, the earthquake, the whirlwind, the fire and the prophet of judgment must all pass, and lifting up our eyes we must see “no one except Jesus” (Matthew 17:8). It is the gentle voice of the Comforter to us, the soft wing of the heavenly Dove. It is the touch of the meek and lowly Jesus that transforms the life, regenerates the heart, supersedes the darkness by light and brings in a transformation as silent, as simple, but as glorious as the advent of the dawn or as the coming of the spring. The real power in ancient Israel was not Elijah, but Elisha. The real forces that save men are the grace of God, the love of Christ and the Holy Spirit. Prayer
3. Elijah’s life revealed the power of prayer. That was a new era in the history of civilization when Benjamin Franklin brought from the clouds the electric spark and harnessed it to the vehicles of all our modern industrial life. That was another era when Cyrus Field found a way to carry that subtle messenger beneath the ocean waves as a submarine cable and two hemispheres could talk to each other in a moment of time. That is still a new era of progress which is giving us Marconi with his ether waves and wireless messages. But higher than all was the discovery that from this little dark planet human hearts could find a telephone to the eternal throne and talk with the almighty God in prayer. That was the ministry which Elijah crystallized into definite form and infinite power as it never had been before. Not easily did his first great message come to him. It is not to dreamers that God speaks His great messages, but it is to men and women that have already become profoundly moved in sympathy, in sorrow and deep concern for the sons of men and in earnest efforts to vindicate the right and suppress the wrong. Therefore we are told by the Apostle James that Elijah “prayed earnestly that it would not rain” (James 5:17). It was he that took the initiative. He had been watching with a heavy heart the progress of idolatry and the power of evil. He had often pleaded on the lonely mountain side with God, and asked Him what He would do for His own great name, and it was through believing prayer at last that the commission came to the great prophet to go forth as the messenger of judgment. And then the second time that God’s hand interposed to remove the stroke, it had to come through prayer. It was no light matter to roll back those gates of brass and open the windows of heaven. Yonder on the crag of Carmel we behold him with his head between his knees bowed in agony and travail watching for the first sign of the coming storm cloud and the promised rain. Back of all this we see the working of mighty spiritual forces and we learn that prayer is to us one of the vital forces of the great economy of the universe. Could we see the spiritual mechanism of the heavens we would behold innumerable wires passing from human heartstrings to yonder throne, and then returning in mighty providential movements over all the world. John has given us the vision of the prayers of all the saints presented upon the golden altar that was before the throne, and then the pouring back again of these prayers on earth as represented by the bowls from the altar. And then he adds, “There came peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning and an earthquake” (Revelation 8:5). Have we learned Elijah’s secret? Are we using our ministry of prayer to its utmost? Are we spiritual forces in the kingdom of God? “Lord, teach us to pray” (Luke 11:1). Faith
4. He was the pattern of victorious faith. His whole life was a life of faith, a life that dealt with the unseen, a life that touched God by a strong hand and a holy confidence. The first incident in his life is the story of the widow’s faith. She ventured her last handful of meal on his assurance of coming plenty, and got back not only a living, but a little later the life of her boy. His splendid triumph at the altar of Carmel was a victory of faith. He made the test as hard as he could because he believed in a God who could do hard things. At a time when water was worth more than gold he found abundance of water to saturate the altar and the trenches round about, and he deluged the sacrificial pile in floods sufficient to quench all other fire but God’s. It was then that the answer came and his faith was vindicated. And so again the promise of the coming rain was not held back until the clouds were in sight, but even before he prayed on the mount he sent the message to the king, “There is the sound of a heavy rain” (1 Kings 18:41). Yes, faith can hear a voice that others cannot hear and see a form to all besides invisible and anticipate the future, calling the things that are not as though they were. Beloved, have we learned the key that unlocks the heavens? The law which is the principle of gravitation in the spiritual realm? The potency that shares the very omnipotence of God? For “with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26), and “everything is possible for him who believes” (Mark 9:23). Hope
5. He was the prophet of the future. He lived beyond his time. The double portion which he gave to Elisha was ahead of time. It was not due for a thousand years. Therefore he told his disciple that it would be a hard thing, but he claimed it in advance. His translation was more than 3,000 years ahead of time. It was like Enoch’s, the prototype of the rapture of the saints when Jesus comes. But Elijah anticipated it and entered upon it ages before it was due. And so we like him may live beyond our age and under “the powers of the coming age” (Hebrews 6:5), saying like the great apostle, “our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body” (Philippians 3:20-21). God’s Tenderness
6. He was a touching example of God’s tenderness with His weak and erring children. The sweetest of all the lessons of his life grows out of his one infirmity. We thank the Apostle James for the little verse, “Elijah was a man just like us” (James 5:17). How weak he seemed as he fled with panting breath and ran a hundred miles before he stopped for fear of Jezebel! How pitiful the spectacle of that heroic figure cringing under the juniper tree and praying that he may die, like some modern sentimental would-be suicide! And yet all that only brought out more vividly the infinite patience and tenderness of God. How gently He nursed him and fed him, not once upbraiding him with his fall. And then how graciously He released him from his trying ministry and gave him the grandest homecoming that mortal ever knew. “I know them by their spots” was the explanation that the shepherd gave of the individual point of his sheep. “One has lost an ear, another has a broken limb, a third has lost an eye, another is always getting lost and giving me needless trouble. That is how I know them.” And that is how God knows a good many of His children. It takes our failures to bring out His unfailing faithfulness. Adam’s fall was no surprise to Adam’s God, but He was ready the next moment with the revelation of redemption. Gideon’s broken lamps were necessary to let the light of hidden torches within shine forth. Israel’s carnival of idolatry at the foot of Sinai astonished Moses, but not God; and the next thing we see is a new revelation of mercy and grace through the tabernacle and the sacrifices, with their glorious types of the grace and blood of Christ. Moses himself failed just to show how the Lord dealt with failure. He lost the Land of Promise through his own broken law. But oh, how God made it up to him as he stood over his dying bed on Nebo’s heights and gently kissed away his departing spirit. With His own hands God arranged Moses’ funeral and kept his body waiting until one glorious night when He brought it forth in resurrection beauty and gave him the high honor of entering the very Land of Promise and introducing the Son of God on Hermon’s height. Peter had to fail to find out the love of Jesus. It was in the experience of Paul’s darkest hours that he learned to say such words as these: “Who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God” (2 Corinthians 1:4). And this is our God, too. “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort” (2 Corinthians 1:3). Let us not willfully fail. But if we do, let us not forget that “underneath are the everlasting arms” (Deuteronomy 33:27).

Chapter 7. Elisha, the Prophet of Grace

Chapter 7. Elisha, the Prophet of GraceThe company of the prophets from Jericho,… said, “The spirit of Elijah is resting on Elisha.” (2 Kings 2:15)It is interesting to follow some noble river through its peaceful winding, through scenes of natural loveliness and commercial activity, until at last we reach its source and stand beside some little rivulet trickling over the rocks, which a child could ford and a handful of earth divert from its course. It is thus that the beautiful Hudson, the noble Mississippi and the great rivers of other lands rise and flow. Section I—The Life of ElishaSuch a picture suggests to us the story of that illustrious life which is to form our present theme. Like some peaceful and noble river, the life of Elisha flowed through the darkest period of Israel’s history for the greater part of an entire century, but its fountain was as simple as the noble streams that we have just referred to. It began in a little incident on his country farm in Abel Meholah when one day the great Elijah passed by and dropped his mysterious mantle over the young man’s shoulders. From that moment life could never again be the same to the son of Shaphat. He went forth to obey his new master and at length to succeed him in his mighty work (1 Kings 19:15-21). The call of Elisha occurred in the 10th century before Christ. Ten years later came the second crisis of his life, the parting with Elijah and the outpouring of the double portion of the Spirit upon him. With this his prophetic ministry properly began, and for the next 10 years we find him engaged in the most active service in the kingdom of Israel, with an occasional visit to Judah and even to Damascus in the north. No less than 16 great miracles are recorded in Elisha’s ministry during this period. But his public ministry continued through 45 more years, of which the incidents have not come down to us. However, we need not doubt that they were as actively spent as the years preceding. His public life lasted through six important reigns, namely: Ahab, Ahaziah and Jeroboam of the house of Omri; and Jehu, Jehoahaz and Joash of the house of Jehu. His death bed was attended by the king of Israel himself, who testified with the most tender sorrow that the prophet was worth more to the kingdom than his very chariots and horsemen. And after his death his very bones seemed to possess supernatural power to quicken from the dead the corpse that touched them, and suggest to our thoughts the immortality which follows a good man’s life. Section II—Lessons Learned From Elisha’s LifeThe lessons of Elisha’s life are intensely practical and helpful. Decision for God

1. He is an example of decision for God (1 Kings 19:19-21). That scene already referred to as the starting point of all his life is a fine example for every hesitating soul at the gates of life. He has everything to hold him back—a happy home, abundant prosperity, if not wealth, a farm on which he could afford to plow with 12 yoke of oxen, and youth with all its attractions and allurements. In a moment that message came to him bidding him leave all and become the companion of the weird figure that stood before him. The man of the mountain and the desert, the man more hated and feared than any man on earth, the man whose presence and prospects had nothing to offer to youth and ambition here. Little wonder, as that mantle touched him, that the young man hesitated for a moment and asked if he might not at least go home and bid his loved ones farewell. But the old prophet saw the danger of the slightest reservation. He turned somewhat sternly away and seemed to signify, if he did not exactly say, “What have I done? It means nothing if you would have it so. God can excuse you if you wish to be excused.” In a moment Elisha saw the crisis and met it with a brave decision that never faltered again. Turning his field into an altar, he converted his plows and harrows into kindling wood and offered up his oxen and sacrificed them to God. Then turning from all his earthly prospects, he followed the stern old prophet without a moment’s hesitation, and henceforth became known as “Elisha… [who] used to pour water on the hands of Elijah” (2 Kings 3:11). The same story is repeated in every earnest life for God. The secret of power in our Christian experience lies at this starting point. The souls that begin, like Elisha, with unreserved devotion to God, find that all their future life bears the same character of decision, and the people that begin with half-hearted purpose are weak and vacillating to the end of the chapter. God is looking for such lives in every age, and He meets us just as we are willing to meet Him. The souls that are unreserved in their devotion to Him will find Him unreserved in His dealings with them. And “with the froward He will wrestle,” and show how little it pays to be ungenerous with the Lord of Glory. As you read these lines, God help you, if you have been halting between two opinions, to yield the last reserve and give every power of your being and every moment of your life to Him. Remember that on the cross Jesus Christ gave you both hands, both feet and every drop of His precious blood. The Double Portion
2. Elisha is an example of deeper spiritual blessing. The next crisis of Elisha’s life is described in 2 Kings 2:17. The experience through which Elisha passed at this time is paralleled by our experience of entire consecration to God and the baptism of the Holy Spirit. The blessing which Elisha sought at the hands of Elijah was practically the gift of the Holy Spirit in the fullness of His power. The reason that Elijah discouraged him and called this “a difficult thing” (2 Kings 2:10), must have been because in the dispensational providence of God the outpouring of the Holy Spirit was not yet due. He was asking it in advance of the time because the Holy Spirit could not come in all His fullness until after Jesus had been glorified. But just as Elijah’s translation was before the time, and he was permitted to anticipate the glory which is reserved for other saints at the coming of the Lord, so Elisha, as he witnessed his master’s translation, was also permitted to enter in by anticipation to the blessings of the covenant of grace that was afterwards to be revealed. There was something audacious in Elisha’s request, and just for that very reason God seems to have been pleased with it. It was not unlike the faith of that woman of Canaan, of whom we read in the story of the Gospels. The Lord Jesus had argued her down and out, and had shown her that the blessings she sought and the blessings He brought were not for such as she, but for the lost sheep of the house of Israel. But she still clung to His feet with a woman’s indomitable perseverance, and believed that somehow He must have a way of helping her. So she cried, “Lord, help me!” (Matthew 15:25). She could not argue, but she could plead. Then came that last and most cruel blow by which He told her that she was not only shut out dispensationally, but morally. She was one of the dogs of the Canaan race, guilty of every shameful sin, and responsible, probably, for her daughter’s curse. And then He told her that it was not meet to take the children’s bread and give it to the dogs. Surely, now her faith is silenced! But, no! Again she rises superior to the trial and even wrings out of it an argument for her blessing. “Yes, Lord,” she says, “but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table” (Matthew 15:27). And the Master was conquered and bade her take all she would. Nothing could stand against such faith. He was delighted with her, and He is ever delighted with souls that dare to put Him to the test and venture upon His boundless power and grace. Elisha’s persistence in seeking this blessing is a fine example to those who often complain of disappointment in seeking God. His master at first seemed to want to dissuade him from his purpose. “Stay here,” he said, “the Lord has sent me to Bethel” (2 Kings 2:2). But farther on Elisha was determined also to go. So, still, the Lord loves to put us to the test and see how much we mean our prayer and how much we want our blessing. At Emmaus “Jesus acted as if he were going farther” (Luke 24:28), and compelled them to constrain Him to come in, and yet was so glad to go in when they would not let Him be excused. In the same way He often seems to hold back our blessing, only that we may call the more earnestly and wait the more perseveringly. How sad His heart must be when He finds us so easily discouraged, and how glad it must make Him to find in us the spirit of Elisha, which refused to be refused. Separation The various steps taken by Elisha in his journey with his master seem to be typical of actual experiences in the life of the soul. Gilgal, the starting point, was the place of Israel’s separation, and it seems to stand in our lives for our separation from the world and our entire dedication to the Lord. God Bethel, the next station, literally means, “the House of God,” and stands for the revelation of God in the life of the soul. For this deeper blessing is not merely a blessing, but it is our union with God Himself. The mistake that so many make is to seek His gifts rather than Himself. We must go to Bethel and let everything go but God before we can know and prove the double portion too. Faith The next station, Jericho, was the place of Israel’s victory by faith, and it stands for the experience of faith in entering into our deeper life with God. It is not so much a matter of feeling, or even of earnest consecration, but of simple believing. Here, as everywhere else, the principle is invariable: “According to your faith will it be done to you” (Matthew 9:29). We may pray all our lives and yet we will get nowhere until we receive the Holy Spirit just as we received the Lord Jesus, by simple appropriating faith. Death The last stage, Jordan, is ever the type of death. Just as it was through the death of Moses, the symbolical death of circumcision, and the death set forth by their crossing the Jordan, that Israel entered Canaan at the first, so still it must ever be by way of the cross. We must die not only to the evil, but to the good that we possess, and learn henceforth to have no life apart from Christ alone. It is there that the revelation comes. It was there that the mantle fell upon the waiting Elisha. And it is there that we shall ever meet our risen Lord. Are we willing to meet the condition? Are we willing to pay the price? Take Your Blessing But we see another of the conditions of the deeper blessing strongly brought out in the story of Elisha. The mantle of his master did not fall upon him but beside him. He had to take it up with his own hands. He had to put it on himself by an act of bold, appropriating faith. Then he had to go forth and use it as he met the swelling floods of Jordan and dared to command them to part asunder while he passed over in the victory of faith. And so we must put on the Lord Jesus. We must receive the Holy Spirit. We must take what God so freely gives. And then we must go forth and use our blessing, as Elisha used his, as we meet the first real difficulties and trials of life which God sends to prove us and see whether we really believe in our blessing or not. To such souls God ever comes in the fullness of His power. He is longing for vessels to hold His blessing. Unfortunately, most of us are made of such flimsy materials that we could not stand the dynamite of His power if it should really come. The Apostle of Grace
3. Elisha was the Apostle of Grace. His very name means “God my salvation.” The root of it in the Hebrew is the very name of the Messiah. And the whole character of his ministry was like that of Jesus Christ, full of gentleness, grace and love. There were only two miracles of judgment in all his ministry, and even these two were greatly modified. The familiar nursery story which haunted our infancy—of the bears that devoured the little children of Bethel—wears a very different aspect when we understand the literal meaning of the original. These were not little children at all, but young men—the roughs, the toughs of the town, the common blackguards that spend their time in sneering at good men and decent women and need to be made sometimes a wholesome example. For such people we are often thankful that there is a devil and a just and holy God. The other miracle of judgment was the punishment of Gehazi for his sneak-thieving in running after Naaman, compromising Elisha by begging of the Syrian after Elisha had so magnanimously refused his gifts. That was indeed a terrible punishment. But we seem to be justified in inferring from a later chapter, where we find Gehazi once more in the front and standing in the presence of the king of Israel, telling him of his master’s power and works,—we infer from this, I say, that Gehazi must in the meantime have been forgiven and restored. The rest of Elisha’s miracles were full of grace and remind one at every step of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself and His works of love and power. They may be divided into several classes.
4. The Miracles of Restoration These include the healing of the barren land by sprinkling salt upon it, and the curing of the poisoned pottage which threatened the lives of his companions.
5. The Miracles of Healing and Physical Power These include the healing of Naaman from leprosy, the birth of the Shunammite’s child and then his resurrection from the dead.
6. The Miracles of Material Blessing Among these were the feeding of a hundred men with bread, the supplying of water for the famine-stricken armies in Edom, the multiplying of the widow’s oil and the relief of the famine in Samaria.
7. The Miracles of Wisdom and Foresight Among these were his announcement to Hazael that he should be king of Syria, his warning to the widow to prepare for the days of famine and his vision of the horses and chariots of fire around the mountain.
8. The Miracles of Supernatural Power Over the Laws of Nature Among these was the story of the axe that was caused to swim in defiance of the law of gravity, and the floods which came without any natural cause to fill the ditches they had dug in the Valley of Edom.
9. The Symbolic Miracles The arrows which he taught Joash to shoot from his dying bed were symbols of victorious prayer and divine deliverance. The oil which he multiplied for the widow’s need was the type of the Holy Spirit who is still the Supply for all our need as we dare to take Him by simple faith.
10. The Miracles of Mercy The most striking of these was his smiting with blindness the servants of the king of Syria when they came to capture him, and then leading them blindfolded into Samaria. After opening their eyes and showing them the greatness and the power of the city, he then sent them back to their homes with the feeling that they had been made fools of and with the sound advice to Ben-Hadad that he had better not come to a country where Elisha was its defender. The tenderness of his loving heart is shown in the tears he shed, as he told Hazael of the cruelties which he was yet to perpetrate on the innocent and helpless. His whole ministry was one of beneficence and the beautiful foreshadowing of the story of the Gospels. Religion in Common Life
11. Elisha was an example of the religion of common life. Unlike his master, Elijah, he was always among the people. Sometimes we see him at the court of Israel, sometimes at the court of Damascus, where the king of Syria sends him such a splendid present that it took 40 camels to carry on their backs. Again we find him in the army, recognized by Jehoshaphat, the great king of Judah, as his friend and the man of God. Again we find him on intimate terms with the poor widow whose boys are about to be sold into slavery. Once again he is traveling all over the land visiting his parish and looking after the schools of the prophets, and the great lady of Shunem invites him to her villa and makes him her abiding guest, honored by his friendship. Still later we see him with his students, down on the banks of the Jordan, helping them to build a new college, and finding the lost axe when it flew off the handle. Here he is not too big to help a boy in his little troubles. And last of all we see him on his sick bed, not sick because of weakness, because he was never so mighty as in his dying hours and in his grave, but sick that he might stand closer to a sick and suffering world and be the pattern and the friend of his people like the Master. What a beautiful example of a life of consecrated manhood and the loveliness of true human kindness! Great Faith
12. Elisha was an example of lofty faith. We see it in the way he claims his baptism and his blessing. We see it in the way he divided the Jordan in the name of the Lord. We see it in the way he announced the coming of plenty to besieged Samaria. We see it in the vision of the chariots and horses of fire, on the mountain top. We see it in the calm and almost humorous way in which he led his enemies around Samaria, and then sent them home, trusting so completely in God that he had no fear of man. And we see it finally and supremely in that beautiful scene at his dying bed, where he taught the hesitating hands of Joash to shoot the arrows of faith and prayer, and then to second the claim and the promise by striking upon the ground again and yet again. And how splendid is the noble anger of the prophet because the king had stopped so soon and had limited his own blessing when God was waiting to give so much more. The Life of Love
13. Along with Elisha’s faith—the keynote of his life—was also love. It takes both to make the noblest character. President Roosevelt was asked one day by a fashionable lady caller, which he considered the greatest character of fiction, and he promptly answered, “Great Heart.” The lady seemed startled for a moment, and then ventured to ask in which of the novels she could find this character. “Oh,” said the President turning away with a faint smile of pity, “you will find him in the Delectable Mountains.” She had evidently not read The Pilgrims Progress. Well, Elisha was one of the Great Hearts of the world. He was one of those men who had got saved clear above themselves and have no business henceforth but to help others. We meet a great many pilgrims in Bunyan’s allegory, but most of them are trying to get there. Great Heart is only trying to get others there. Some people spend their lives trying to get to heaven; other people get there at the start and spend their lives taking others along. That was Elisha. Oh, that it might be you and me! Victory in Death
14. We see in Elisha a victorious death. As we look on such a scene, and we see them sometimes still, we feel like asking: Is that a deathbed where the Christian lies? Yes, but not his; ’tis death himself that dies. When Rudyard Kipling lay for weeks on the borders of life and death, one day his nurse saw his lips moving, and gently asked him if he wanted anything. “Oh, yes,” he said, “I want my heavenly Father. He only can help me now.” It was He that took the sting of the defeat from Elisha’s departing, and made it an occasion for him to show the king by his bedside the resources and the power of God. God help us so to live, that even death will be part of our triumph. Immortal Lives
15. We see in Elisha a posthumous influence. Such men never die. After he was buried, Elisha’s bones had power to bring to life the corpse that touched them. Our greatest work should follow us. Oh, that we may so live, that it may also be true of each of us, “And by faith he still speaks, even though he is dead” (Hebrews 11:4).

Chapter 8. Amos, the Prophet of Warning

Chapter 8. Amos, the Prophet of WarningThe words of Amos, one of the shepherds of Tekoa—what he saw concerning Israel two years before the earthquake, when Uzziah was king of Judah and Jeroboam son of Jehoash was king of Israel (Amos 1:1)Amos answered Amaziah, “I was neither a prophet nor a prophets son, but I was a shepherd, and I also took care of sycamore-fig trees. But the Lord took me from tending the flock and said to me, ‘Go prophesy to my people Israel.’” (Amos 7:14-15)Therefore this is what I will do to you, Israel, and because I will do this to you, prepare to meet your God, O Israel (Amos 4:12)These words describe the humble extraction and the holy calling of the prophet Amos and pass on to us his solemn message for every soul today as well as for Israel of old. The subject divides itself into the times, the man and his messages to our times. Section I—The Times of AmosHe lived and prophesied in the reign of Jeroboam II, the fourth king of Jehu’s line. His period was the eighth century before Christ, and his date probably a little later than that of Jonah. The one was sent of God to aid Jeroboam in his victorious career, the other to warn him of God’s impending judgment for the sins of himself and his people. Jeroboam was the most powerful and illustrious of all the sovereigns of the 10 tribes. He restored the boundaries of his kingdom almost to the limits of Solomon’s splendid empire. Under his administration the nation rose to the highest prosperity, wealth and influence, and his beautiful capital Samaria became a city of architectural beauty and luxurious splendor. But, the moral and religious effects of such prosperity, as might have been expected, were all in the direction of ungodliness, oppression, idolatry and every vice. We cannot give a better picture of the times of Amos than the following paragraphs from the scholarly volume of Dr. Geikie, most of which is really an abstract of the book of Amos itself: The Times of Jeroboam II Under the reign of Jeroboam II, material prosperity rose to a height it had never previously known. Samaria grew rich from the booty of the wars and the profits of commerce and trade. Mansions of hewn stone rose on every side; the inner walls, in many cases, an imitation of Ahab’s palace, covered with plates of ivory, and the chambers fitted up with couches and furniture of the same rare material. Cool houses for the hot season; others warmer, for the winter, became the fashion. Pleasant vineyards attached to them covered the slopes of the hills. But as the wealth of the few accumulated, the mass of the population had grown poorer. The apparent prosperity was only a phosphorescence on decay. Intercourse with the heathen communities around; the loose morality of armies dissolved after victorious campaigns and dispersed to their homes; the unscrupulous self-indulgence and the magnificence of the rich, prompting equally unworthy means to indulge it; and the widening gulf between the upper and lower classes, were ruining the country. Above all, the old religiousness of Israel was well-nigh gone. The ox worship of Bethel and Dan had been gradually developed into a gross idolatry; Samaria and Gilgal had raised calf images of their own, for local worship. The great temple at Bethel, at which the king worshipped, and near which he had a palace, boasted of a high priest, with a numerous staff, richly endowed; not poor, like the priests of Judea. The whole country was filled with altars abused by superstition. As time went on, even the darker idolatries of Phenicia, which Jehu, the founder of the dynasty, had so fiercely put down, rose again everywhere. A temple to Asherah had remained in Samaria, and was now reopened. The women once more burned incense before her as their favorite goddess and decked themselves with their earrings and jewels on their feast days. Silver and gold images of Baal were set up. The smoke of sacrifices to idols rose on the tops of the mountains, and incense was burned to them on the hills, under shade of sacred groves. The obscenities of heathenism once more polluted the land. Maidens and matrons consorted with temple harlots, and played the wanton in the name of religion. “Gilead was given to idolatry; they sacrificed to bullocks in Gilgal”; they “transgressed at Bethel and multiplied transgression at Gilgal.” Cursed by Prosperity The country was, in fact, spoiled by prosperity, which no healthy public morality any longer controlled or directed. Society from the highest to the lowest had become corrupt. Drunkenness and debauchery spread. Wine had taken away their understanding. The birthday festival of the king saw the most revolting excesses. “The drunkards of Ephraim” became a phrase even in Jerusalem. The very priest and the prophet reeled with strong drink at their ministrations. The judge on the bench, and the military officers, covered with medals, were equally Bacchanalian. Guests at the feast drank till the scene was repulsive. Even the women were given to their cups. The great ladies of Samaria—fair and well fed as the kine of Bashan—are described as greedy for drink. Such sensuality and profuseness led to all other vices. The passion for money became general. Corrupt judges, for a bribe, handed over honest men to slavery, as debtors, for so small a default as the price of a pair of shoes. The usurer, after bringing a man to poverty, seemed to grudge him the dust he had put on his head as mourning. Instead of restoring to the poor in the evening, as the law required, the upper garment they had taken in pledge—his sleeping robe—men spread it, as their own, over the couch on which they lay down to nightly carousals, held in the house of their gods, where they feasted on the flesh of their sacrifices, washed down with wine robbed from the helpless. Tumults, from such oppression, filled the streets of Samaria. The mansions of the great were stored with the plunder of their poorer neighbors. Their owners lay, garlanded and anointed, on couches of ivory. Their banquets were splendid. Rich music filled their halls as they feasted. Nor would the wine tempered with water—the drink of their fathers—content them. They drew it pure from the huge vessels in which their predecessors had mingled their modest refreshment. The husbandman had to make them oppressive gifts of his wheat. The great landowners used false measures and false weights in selling their corn, and claimed full price for even the refuse grain. Men had to pledge their clothes and their freedom for food. Such was the state of things even in the earlier years of Jeroboam II, but matters grew worse toward its close, and in the years that followed his death. No truth, or mercy, or knowledge of God, we are told, was left in the land. Swearing, lying, homicide, stealing, committing adultery, house-breaking and murder till blood touched blood, ran riot. No road was safe. Bands of robbers infested the thoroughfares. Life was no longer sacred. Even the people at court and the priests were deeply compromised in the worst crimes. Such were the times amid which Amos was called from his humble task to bear witness against a nation’s sins. Section II—The Man and His MessageHe was the sole example under the Old Testament of a man in an obscure position who was called to the prophetic office. His occupation was that of a herdsman in the little village of Tekoa, near Bethlehem. When out of employment in the care of someone’s flocks he eked out a living by picking and selling the wild figs known as sycamore fruit. His Visit to Samaria In obedience to God’s message, he journeyed to the Northern Kingdom, and, mingling with the crowds in Samaria on the occasion of some idolatrous festival, he began after the manner of ancient prophets his public address to the little company gathered around him either in the temple court or the public street. His weird eloquence and solemn manner would soon attract a crowd, and his evident prophetic inspiration give weight and authority to his message. In the case of Amos, the style of his address was well fitted to command attention. His messages were clothed in a poetic eloquence quite out of keeping with his humble calling and apparent advantages. There are no sublimer passages in any of the prophets than many of the splendid figures which Amos draws from the constellations of heaven, the tempests of the desert, the beauties of nature and the mystic realm of pure prophetic symbolism. A Popular Message His first address was as tactful as it was eloquent. Beginning with a striking introduction, he announced that the Lord was about to thunder from Zion with a voice which should blast the verdure of the plains and wither the very forests of Carmel. And this voice was to be in judgment on Damascus and Syria, because of their cruel treatment of the people of Gilead whom they had defeated and tortured. The palaces of Ben-Hadad were to be destroyed and Syria was to go into captivity to distant Kir. Nothing could have been more popular than such a message. Syria was Israel’s ancient foe, and through all his audience there were doubtless mutterings of cordial assent and deep delight. The prophet resumes; and now his message is against the Philistines. Upon Gaza, Ashdod, Ashkelon and Ekron, the thunders of judgment are poured forth, and still his audience listens with unmingled delight. Next the turn of Tyre comes and she receives her sentence: “I will send fire upon the walls of Tyre that will consume her fortresses” (Amos 1:10). Next comes Edom, and her cruelty is remembered, and upon Teman and Bozrah the vials of judgment are emptied. Ammon lies hard by and her children have had their part in the atrocious cruelties of recent wars. And so the vision rises of Ammon’s fall as the whirlwind of battle sweeps over Rabbah and the king and his princes go forth into captivity. Still the torrent of judgment rolls on, and now Moab passes out in the fires of judgment, and the palaces of Kerioth perish “in great tumult amid war cries and the blast of the trumpet” (Amos 2:2). The heathen nations all have had their turn, and now the people listen with wonder as Judah, their own kindred kingdom, comes in for divine judgment too. “I will send fire upon Judah that will consume the fortresses of Jerusalem” (Amos 2:5). Striking Home By this time his audience must have been deeply stirred. Nothing could have pleased their national self-confidence so much as to have their rivals and enemies thus disposed of. But now, after a solemn pause, the prophet turns to his audience, doubtless with tones of sorrow, and beginning with the same formula as in the other cases, they are startled to hear him say: “For three sins of Israel, even for four, I will not turn back my wrath” (Amos 2:6). But the sensation deepens as he proceeds to specify his indictments and lay bare with a fearless hand the injustice, the oppression, the shameless impurity and the intemperance and vice of all classes. The chapters that follow doubtless contain portions of many addresses given at various times. Woe to Israel They literally burn with holy invective and scathing rebuke. “Woe to you who are complacent in Zion” (Amos 6:1), the prophet cries out, “and to you who feel secure on Mount Samaria” (Amos 6:1). You put off the evil day and bring near a reign of terror. You lie on beds inlaid with ivory and lounge on your couches. You dine on choice lambs and fattened calves. You strum away on your harps like David and improvise on musical instruments. You drink wine by the bowlful and use the finest lotions, but you do not grieve over the ruin of Joseph. Therefore you will be among the first to go into exile. (Amos 6:3-7) The Lord God Almighty declares: “I abhor the pride of Jacob and detest his fortresses; I will deliver up the city and everything in it.” (Amos 6:8) Heavier WoesIt would seem as if his next address was given at Bethel in the temple of idolatry there. It consisted of three startling visions. In the first he saw a swarm of destructive locusts sweeping over the land and he cried out to God to forgive and stay His hand. The prayer was heard and the scourge arrested. Next a consuming flame appeared upon the great sea, and it sucked up the waters of the mighty deep and threatened to devour the land. Again the prophet pleaded and the judgment was stayed. In the third vision the Lord stood upon a wall with a plumb line in His hand indicating the crookedness of the kingdom. But now there was no reprieve and the sentence went forth, “I will spare them no longer” (Amos 7:8). “The sanctuaries of Israel will be ruined; with my sword I will rise against the house of Jeroboam” (Amos 7:9). Expelled Up to this point Amos had been tolerated by the authorities but now the high priest Amaziah interposed. The mention of the king’s name and the awful threatening before the people seemed to him treasonable and dangerous, and he sent word to the king to ask what he should do. The answer came back that Amos was to be sent to his home, and with insolent language Amaziah ordered him to get out. As he turned away he told the high priest that he was nothing but a common herdsman, but that he had come at God’s command; and he added as he left this awful judgment: You say, “Do not prophesy against Israel and stop preaching against the house of Isaac.” Therefore this is what the Lord says: “Your wife will become a prostitute in the city, and your sons and daughters will fall by the sword. Your land will be measured and divided up, and you yourself will die in a pagan country. And Israel will certainly go into exile, away from their native land.” (Amos 7:16-17) Parting MessageAmos leaves another message as he crosses the borders of Israel. It consists of two visions. The first is the vision of a basket of summer fruit so ripe as to be almost rotten, and telling of the nation’s ripeness for its speedily approaching doom. The second is the vision of the Lord standing by the altar and commanding the angel to smite the altar, with the fearful threat added, Though they dig down to the depths of the grave, from there my hand will take them. Though they climb up to the heavens, from there I will bring them down. Though they hide themselves on the top of Carmel, there I will hunt them down and seize them. Though they hide from me at the bottom of the sea, there I will command the serpent to bite them. Though they are driven into exile by their enemies, there I will command the sword to slay them. I will fix my eyes upon them for evil and not for good. The Lord, the Lord Almighty, he who touches the earth and it melts, and all who live in it mourn— the whole land rises like the Nile, then sinks like the river of Egypt— he who builds his lofty palace in the heavens and sets its foundation on the earth, who calls for the waters of the sea and pours them out over the face of the land— the Lord is his name. (Amos 9:2-6) Mercy at LastBut now the visions change. Judgment has spent its force and mercy again rejoices against judgment. Down through the coming ages, the prophet looks and beholds God’s faithful covenant love preserving Israel, though scattered among the nations and sifted like corn in a sieve, “and not a pebble will reach the ground” (Amos 9:9). Judah, also, while punished, is to be preserved. Down in the distant future is the glorious promise of the coming of the Lord and the restoration and reunion of both Israel and Judah in their own land amid blessings so beneficent that we can only quote the prophet’s sublime language to describe it: “The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when the reaper will be overtaken by the plowman and the planter by the one treading grapes. New wine will drip from the mountains and flow from all the hills. I will bring back my exiled people Israel; they will rebuild the ruined cities and live in them. They will plant vineyards and drink their wine; they will make gardens and eat their fruit.” (Amos 9:13-14) These prophecies, as we shall see later, were considered important enough to supply the substance of the first great decree of the apostles and elders in the Council at Jerusalem as they laid the foundations of the missionary work of the Christian age. Such is the story of Amos. Section III—The Lessons for Our TimesFor the Worker

1. To the Christian worker Amos is the pattern of what God can do with the most humble and illiterate instrument if only he is yielded to God in courageous obedience and filled with the Holy Spirit. Amos represented the humblest class, and yet he reached the very height of prophetic inspiration and faithful service. And so, still, it is just as true, that “God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong” (1 Corinthians 1:27). “To nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him” (1 Corinthians 1:28-29). Even if you are humble, illiterate and without talent or influence, God can use you if you will let Him have you and fill you and then be wholly obedient to His will. For the Nation
2. The second lesson is a national one. It is the danger of national prosperity leading to luxury, immorality and injustice. The sins of Amos’ times are being rapidly reproduced in the social life of our republic. The wealth of this country is unparalleled, and the spirit of pride, luxury and social extravagance is growing in proportion to the increase of our wealth. Millionaires and multi-millionaires are counted today not by scores, but by thousands, and society is a competition for preeminence in the display of wealth, luxury and art. An English artist, who spent last summer in Newport, declared on leaving that the homes of Newport were palaces unapproachable in their artistic adornment and lavish display of wealth by those of any other age or land. The palaces of royalty in the capitals of Europe, and the splendor of ancient architecture and decoration are dwarfed before these products of American taste and riches. And the prospect grows more alarming with the amazing increase of our wealth and the expansion of our ideas of living. These are the things that have crippled our missionary activities. Modern culture has so multiplied our possible avenues of expenditure that the amplest fortunes are barely sufficient for the support of fashionable life. What the moral and spiritual effects are may be learned from the current criticisms which society itself is giving of its inner life, and the exposures of our divorce courts and our argus-eyed journalism. We have not sunk quite so far as ancient Israel, but we are on the same inclined plane, and the track seems oiled for a swifter descent to the same abyss. Beloved, do not make wealth your ambition unless it is to spend it solely for the glory of God and the spread of His gospel. And if it has been given, do not let it tempt you from the simplicity of living into personal, domestic or social extravagancy. For the Watcher
3. To the watcher on the towers of faith and hope, Amos is the prophet of the coming age and the blessed messenger of the Lord’s return. Out of the failure and darkness of his own time, he looked on to the better age which is to come when Jesus returns. And God honored him to give the keynote to the first Council of the Christian Church and the great plan of the world’s evangelization which we are carrying out today in preparation for the coming of the Lord. “The words of the prophets are in agreement with this, as it is written: ‘After this I will return and rebuild David’s fallen tent. Its ruins I will rebuild, and I will restore it, that the remnant of men may seek the Lord, and all the Gentiles who bear my name, says the Lord, who does these things’” (Acts 15:15-17). Like Amos let us look out from the shadow of our times to the dawning of that better day, and take as our watchword for every work and hope and trial, “till the coming of the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 4:15). For the Sinner
4. To the sinner Amos is the prophet of mercy and warning. How tender the compassion that tried to save God’s ancient people from their doom and still would save the presumptuous sinner from needless ruin! How fearful the retribution that came to Amaziah for rejecting the message of the Lord and how desperate the folly of those who shall dare to defy the Almighty and bring upon themselves the awful words: “But since you rejected me when I called and no one gave heed when I stretched out my hand” (Proverbs 1:24). “Then they will call to me but I will not answer; they will look for me but will not find me” (Proverbs 1:28). And oh, how solemn is that message which comes echoing down the centuries from the lips of Amos and has brought many a soul to conviction and salvation, “Prepare to meet your God” (Amos 4:12). Let it bring conviction and salvation to some soul who reads these lines. Are you prepared to meet Him? Have you met Him already under the precious blood and been reconciled through Jesus Christ? Are you walking with Him in constant fellowship as a loving child; and so giving account of yourself each day to God, that for you the day of judgment is passed before it comes and the prospect of meeting Him is not only free from terror, but is as bright as the hope of heaven? Oh, beloved, “Prepare to meet your God” (Amos 4:12). “Submit to God and be at peace with him; in this way prosperity will come to you” (Job 22:21).

Chapter 9. Hosea, the Prophet of Mercy

Chapter 9. Hosea, the Prophet of MercyYou are destroyed, O Israel,because you are against me, against your helper. (Hosea 13:9)The word of the Lord that came to Hosea son of Beeri during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and during the reign of Jeroboam the son of Jehoash, king of Israel. (Hosea 1:1)In the year 721 B.C., that eighth century before the Christian era, which witnessed the rise of Rome and Babylon, there happened in Samaria the saddest tragedy of the Old Testament. Amid scenes of horror, the kingdom of the 10 tribes perished, their fair city of Samaria fell under the hands of the Assyrians and Israel’s tribes were carried captive into far distant lands. At the same time other captives from these lands were brought to populate Samaria; and thus, as far as it could be made humanly possible, the extermination of the nation was accomplished. For 50 years, pious and patriotic hearts had foreseen this inevitable fate, and had forewarned this sinful people of the coming overthrow. After the brilliant career of Jeroboam II, which raised Israel for a time to her old preeminence, but which was but the flicker of the candle flame before it sank in darkness, the story of Israel’s kings was an unbroken record of anarchy and assassination. God’s time of love is always the hour of man’s emergency. Just as Elijah and Elisha came to Israel in the dreadful days of Jezebel, and Jeremiah hovered like a guardian angel over Jerusalem two centuries later when she fell, so God sent His messengers again and again to Israel to plead against their reckless crimes, and avert, if possible, their threatened judgment. We have already seen how Jonah was the counselor and friend of Jeroboam, and how Amos came up from Judah to warn him and his people against the coming peril. But above all others, there was one man who for more than 60 years stood as the protecting angel between them and their fate. He lived and prophesied from the time of Jeroboam to the time of Hezekiah, a span of a good deal more than half a century. His beautiful name, the same as Joshua, Jesus and Messiah, signifies “salvation” or “savior.” By a striking coincidence, the last king of Israel bore the same name as the last prophet. Both were Hosea or Hoshea. Both had the same significance; but the one, the king, had stood for the best that man can do to save, while the other, the prophet, stood for the salvation of the Lord. Thus God was pointing forward, as if by a living parable, to the greater Savior that was in due time to come to deliver His people, not only from their calamities and enemies, but from that which was the root of all their trouble—their sin. The life and writings of Hosea, when considered in connection with his place in the tragic history of his time, present the most pathetic picture, perhaps, of the Old Testament. Let us first look at the man, and then at his message to his own people and to our times. Section I—The ManA Ministry of Suffering Like Ezekiel and Jeremiah, and like the greater Prophet to whom his life pointed forward, the Man of Sorrows, he was early baptized into a ministry of suffering. His own life became a sort of object lesson of the story of his country and the message of God to His people. He was commanded by Jehovah to marry a woman of bad reputation, like so many of the women of her time, as a divine picture of God Himself, stooping to take to His heart the vile sinner whom He so strangely loves and saves. Three children were born of this ill-mated union, and as one by one, each little babe lay in its cradle, it also became a living picture of the mournful story that was so soon to be enacted. The firstborn was called Jezreel, meaning, “I will punish,” and he was thus made a living prophecy of the judgment that God was so soon to send. The second was a daughter, and her name was Lo-Ruhamah, meaning, “no longer show love,” and she forewarned her people of the fact that God’s mercy for them soon should end. The third was a son, and his sad name was Lo-Ammi, meaning, “not my people.” This expressed the last stage of the impending calamity, when they would be cut off, not merely from God’s mercy but from God’s covenant, and He should drop them utterly. After all this there came a second trial to the prophet. The wife of his bosom, whom he had reclaimed from shame and made the mother of his children, went back once more to her old life of sin and forsook her husband and sought her lovers. All this was symbolic of Israel’s turning from God after He had called them and saved them. Then follows the story of the reclaiming of the unfaithful wife; but now she is not received back fully at first, but for a time is placed on probation. “You are to live with me many days,” is the contract, “and I will live with you” (Hosea 3:3). This long interval was intended to foreshadow Israel’s centuries of waiting through the times of the Gentiles, until God’s set time shall have come, and then the restoration will be complete, and they shall be betrothed to Him in faithfulness, never to wander again. Thus the prophet’s whole history was a parable of his ministry, and his own secret soul went through all the sorrows which his people were to experience, and his own life was a sort of miniature of the greater story of their destiny. Is it not true that every worker for God must pass through the experience of his work first in his own soul? It is only that which we have deeply felt that we can make others feel. This is the very essence of our Savior’s priesthood, that He “is [not] unable to sympathize with our weaknesses” (Hebrews 4:15). This was the secret of Paul’s great power to help and bless. “Who is weak, and I do not feel weak? Who is led into sin, and I do not inwardly burn?” (2 Corinthians 11:29) was his sympathetic testimony. “I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church” (Colossians 1:24). Beloved, are we willing thus to bear His cross and to carry His burdens for His suffering ones? Section II—His MessageHis Family Tragedy The book of Hosea begins, as we have seen, with a sort of autobiography, the story of a family tragedy: the prophet’s marriage to a licentious woman, the birth of his three children, her unfaithfulness afterwards and her return and probation, with the final reconciliation and the application of all this to the history of Israel. This occupies the first three chapters. National Sin The chapters that follow contain reports of a large number of addresses and messages given by the prophet from time to time, and thrown together, not perhaps in any exact logical or chronological order, and yet as a fair expression of the various stages of his ministry and its treatment by the people. The fourth chapter contains an indictment of the nation for its crimes, and an awful picture of their bloodshed, murder, stealing, idolatry and shameless impurity. He charges the priests with being the leaders of the people in vileness, and the very matrons and maidens with consorting with temple prostitutes, and even sharing in their wickedness in the shameless orgies of their idolatrous worship. In the fifth and sixth chapters their punishment has already begun. The Assyrians are upon their border, but instead of turning to God they resort to diplomacy and deceit. They play alternately with Egypt on the one side as an ally, and then Assyria on the other, and their dishonesty is punished by losing the friendship of both. At last God turns away and exclaims, “Then I will go back to my place until they admit their guilt. And they will seek my face; in their misery they will earnestly seek me” (Hosea 5:15). The very next verse finds the vacillating people crying, “Come, let us return to the Lord. He has torn us to pieces but he will heal us; he has injured us but he will bind up our wounds” (Hosea 6:1). But, alas, it is all transitory. “What can I do with you, Ephraim?” He cries, “What can I do with you, Judah? Your love is like the morning mist, like the early dew that disappears” (Hosea 6:4). “They do not turn to the Most High; they are like a faulty bow” (Hosea 7:16). And so he gives them up again to punishment and judgment. “The days of punishment are coming” (Hosea 9:7). “They sow the wind and reap the whirlwind” (Hosea 8:7). “My God will reject them” (Hosea 9:17). “All your fortresses will be devastated— as Shalman devastated Beth Arbel on the day of battle, when mothers were dashed to the ground with their children” (Hosea 10:14). Divine Compassion But once more God’s merciful heart recoils from the strange work of judgment. Looking back over their past history, He remembers, “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son” (Hosea 11:1). “It was I who taught Ephraim to walk, taking them by the arms;… I led them with cords of human kindness, with ties of love” (Hosea 11:3-4). “How can I hand you over, Israel? How can I treat you like Admah? How can I make you like Zeboiim? My heart is changed within me; all my compassion is aroused. I will not carry out my fierce anger, nor will I return and devastate Ephraim. For I am God, and not man” (Hosea 11:8-9). But mercy was wasted on their unworthy, deceitful nature, and the sentence had at last to go forth. “So I will come upon them like a lion, like a leopard I will lurk by the path. Like a bear robbed of her cubs, I will attack them and rip them open. Like a lion I will devour them; a wild animal will tear them apart” (Hosea 13:7-8). “The guilt of Ephraim is stored up, his sins are kept on record” (Hosea 13:12). “The people of Samaria must bear their guilt, because they have rebelled against their God. They will fall by the sword; their little ones will be dashed to the ground, their pregnant women ripped open” (Hosea 13:16). The Last Appeal But now there seems to come a pause in the movement of this drama of sin and judgment, and a voice is heard pleading in strange tenderness in the closing chapter: “Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God. Your sins have been your downfall! Take words with you and return to the Lord. Say to him: ‘Forgive all our sins and receive us graciously’” (Hosea 14:1-2). And there comes in response, like the voice of a mother’s tenderness, “I will heal their waywardness and love them freely, for my anger has turned away from them” (Hosea 14:4). And then follows that magnificent picture drawn from all the richest imagery of that luxuriant land—from the sparkling dew of the morning and the blossoms of the fertile plain, and the forests of mighty Lebanon and the verdure of the olive on the mountain side and the waving harvests of grain, and the sweet fragrance of the mountain and the plain—all blended in one supernal picture of gentleness and grace, as God pours out the fullness of His heart and the promises of His grace. And the last scene in the drama is the penitent resolve of Ephraim, “What more have I to do with idols?” (Hosea 14:8), and the last answer of Jehovah, “your fruitfulness comes from me” (Hosea 14:8). Ephraim has come back to God and God has betrothed His bride to Him forever in faithfulness. Section III—Lessons Learned From HoseaSin

1. The first lesson deals with the aggravations and effects of sin. The sin of Israel was the type of all sin, for sin is the same in every age. As we have already seen, the sins that grew out of Israel’s luxury and ungodliness are repeating themselves once more in these last days of luxury and pride. And they can only bring the same result. Hosea’s proverb expresses it more forcibly than any other language can express: “They sow the wind, and reap the whirlwind” (Hosea 8:7). The consequence will be the same as the cause, but immeasurably greater. The whirlwind is but the wind in another form, but the wind multiplied 10 thousandfold. Let us take care as we trifle with the gentle zephyr of passion and of sinful pleasure. It fans your cheek today, it breathes its fragrance upon your senses, but tomorrow it will sweep like the desolating blast. Insincerity
2. The second lesson deals with half-hearted service. The Israel of Hosea was the picture of a large part of the Church today. “Ephraim is a flat cake not turned over” (Hosea 7:8). Is there anything more disgusting than half-cooked food? And so the Church is full of people who have had a touch of fire—at the altar today, at the theater tomorrow; thanking God today, grumbling tomorrow; singing today of a Savior’s love, and tomorrow squeezing the last cent out of some hapless victim. Again, what is more expressive than Hosea’s figure: “Your love is like the morning mist, like the early dew that disappears” (Hosea 6:4). Inconstant purposes, ebbing and fading; love and faith, faltering and stumbling; obedience, halting and compromising. Oh, how sad the end of our good beginnings and the blighting of our morn’s fair promise! “He who stands firm to the end will be saved” (Matthew 10:22). Hosea’s people were like the Laodiceans, to whom John bore the message of the Savior “Because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth” (Revelation 3:16). The Back Slider
3. The third lesson is God’s mercy to the sinner and the backslider. We have already traced the pathetic figure and utterance which express the divine love for sinful Israel. This love is still the same for the sinner and the backslider. It is not a mere sentimental love which trifles with sin. With inexorable faithfulness it deals with transgression and aims to bring the erring one to true repentance. But how gladly it welcomes the penitent and freely forgives and fully heals his backsliding and his sorrow! The prophecy of Hosea has been well called the Old Testament parable of the Prodigal Son. It is just like it in its deep pathos and overflowing love. The Gospel
4. It is a picture of the gospel. “I will… love them freely, for my anger has turned away from them” (Hosea 14:4) suggests immediately to the thoughtful mind the ground of that free and full forgiveness, and the cross of Calvary by which the anger was turned away. There is a passage in the sixth chapter where penitent Israel exclaims, “After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will restore us, that we may live in his presence” (Hosea 6:2). This is obviously an allusion to the three days of Christ’s death and burial and the resurrection on the morning of the third, and also to the spiritual fact that the believer also must die with Christ and rise with Him into new life, in order to receive the fullness of divine grace. Israel
5. Hosea is the prophet of Israel’s restoration. He tells us that the time is coming surely when they shall sing again in the mountains of Samaria and the heights of Zion, and the fearful curse of ages shall be wiped away in God’s eternal favor and His everlasting covenant. Yet the Israelites will be like the sand on the seashore, which cannot be measured or counted. In the place where it was said to them, “You are not my people,” they will be called “sons of the living God.” The people of Judah and the people of Israel will be reunited, and they will appoint one leader and will come up out of the land, for great will be the day of Jezreel. (Hosea 1:10-11) I will plant her for myself in the land; I will show my love to the one I called “Not my loved one.” I will say to those called “Not my people,” “You are my people”; and they will say, “You are my God.” (Hosea 2:23) Afterward the Israelites will return and seek the Lord their God and David their king. They will come trembling to the Lord and to his blessings in the last days. (Hosea 3:5) The Riches of Grace6. Hosea gives us a most attractive picture of the riches of God’s grace to His own. All the beauty and glory of nature are called into requisition to express in eloquent figure and expressive phrase His gentleness and grace. “I will be like the dew to Israel” (Hosea 14:5). How it speaks of the hallowed influences of the Holy Spirit. The beauty of the lily, the luxuriance of the olive, the strength of the cedar, the abundance of the grain, the fragrance of the vine, the sweetness of the wine of Lebanon—all these proclaim the infinite grace and overflowing blessing which God is waiting to pour into the hearts that can receive it. “Men will dwell again in his shade” (Hosea 14:7), tells us of the higher blessing which He will make us give to others after we ourselves have been blessed, and then His grace is guaranteed to keep us faithful. “O Ephraim, what more have I to do with idols?… your fruitfulness comes from me” (Hosea 14:8). In the second chapter there is a magnificent series of metaphors rich with the suggestion of His abundant grace. He says, “I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in love and compassion. I will betroth you in faithfulness, and you will acknowledge the Lord” (Hosea 2:19-20). And as he calls us from the lower plane of the servant to the closer intimacy and higher dignity of the bride, He adds: “you will call me, ‘[Ishi] my husband’; you will no longer call me ‘[Baali] my master.’” (Hosea 2:16). Then, too, He tells them the blessings of His providence will follow close upon the riches of His grace, and all nature will be made tributary to the purposes of His love. “I will respond to the skies, and they will respond to the earth; and the earth will respond to the grain, the new wine and oil, and they will respond to Jezreel” (Hosea 2:21-22). What a beautiful chain of second causes all leading up to God! The people call to the grain and the wine, and they in turn call to the famished earth, and the earth cries to the brazen heavens. But all are in vain until the heavens cry unto the heart of God, and then the showers come, the fruits spring, the earth is covered with verdure and abundance and the wants of the people are supplied. And it is still as true as ever that all things wait upon the soul that walks with God, and “we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28). While we learn from these lurid visions the certainty that justice and judgment are the habitation of His throne, yet how sweetly we also learn that mercy and truth shall go before His face. In the abundance of His grace we may well add, “Blessed are those who have learned to acclaim you, who walk in the light of your presence, O Lord. They rejoice in your name all day long; they exult in your righteousness” (Psalms 89:15-16). Sinner! Backslider! Return to this loving Father. And child of His love and bride of His heart, walk softly and closely with Him. “Who is wise? He will realize these things. Who is discerning? He will understand them. The ways of the Lord are right; the righteous walk in them, but the rebellious stumble in them” (Hosea 14:9).