Montreal Conference: 1962
Table of Contents
Elisha 1
Address—C.E. Lunden
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The following address, taken by Mr. Lundeen at Newman Place Hall, Monday, September the 24th, 1962 is the first in the series of lectures on Elisha.
Now we sing together and #193.
Jesus, my Savior, Thou art mine. The Father's gift of love divine. All I have done in all art are now the fortune of my heart.
She was my.
Favorite.
Return to the 19th chapter of First Kings, the 19th Bird.
00:05:07
So he that is the light that he parted then and found the light to the sun is Chaffetz, who was plowing with 12 yoke of oxygen before him, and he was the 12.
And Elijah passed by him, and cast his mantle upon him. And he left the oxygen, and ran after he liked it, and said, Let me, I pray thee, kiss my father and my mother, and then I will follow thee. And said unto him, Go back again, for what have I done to thee? And he returned back from him, and took a yoke of oxen, and flew them, and boiled their flesh with the influence of the oxygen who gave under the people. And they did eat. Then he arose, and went after Elijah.
Administered unto him.
Possibly a year ago, some of us were looking together over the life of Elijah.
And we noticed as we were following along.
As the scripture LED us into the various activities of Elijah the prophet, that his ministry took on a certain character, I suppose that's always true of every servant, some particular character.
We noticed that in his life there were seven pictures of repentance.
We didn't go into all of them, but we did notice some of them and in reading them carefully we discovered that.
F7 is the perfect number we have here, rather a complete picture of that subject.
Not now, doctrinally, as we have in the New Testament.
Set out before us in a beautiful order of display. In the activities of that problem, the first person that was mentioned was the widow of Sarepta. She repented because that prophet had been in her house for 3 1/2 years.
She says. Have you come to the plain white son?
Our Carson was awakened because of the presence of that man of God in her home. Had he said anything to her about?
This though.
And it shows us the power of a godly life.
How it brought that woman to a sense of her need before God. But we also learned at the same time that the Spirit of God is bringing before. It's a lovely type. The Gentiles to say, are gathering around a rejected Christ because he, Elijah, is the type of Christ.
The rejected Christ.
So if you will turn with me to Luke's Gospel, just for a moment.
We'll notice what we did notice at that time, the connection with.
What the New Testament says about these two ministries, the ministry of Elijah and the ministry of Elijah.
You know, our dear brother Harry Hay, who is now going to be with the Lord some years ago, many years ago, brought before me a thought that I value very much, he said. Whenever you read the Old Testament, remember you have to read it in the light of the news.
Because we're told that all structures get into it by inspiration of God.
We're told also that the things that were written before that were written for our learning.
And we're told that the scriptures that are given by inspiration of God are profitable for doctrines, but it doesn't say they're all doctrines.
Until we get the doctrine in the new, but the older profitable for doctors.
That is, here we have perhaps one or two verses. In the New, we have a whole chapter explaining in the news in picture form, and that's the prophet of the Old Testament. And so in the in the 4th chapter of Luke's Gospel, we have what the New Testament says about the ministry of Elijah and Elijah.
Now, it's a remarkable thing that we have this in Luke's Gospel.
Because Luke Gospel rings before us and subject to rejection.
It also brings before us the subject of the Son of Man.
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And so in the 24th verse of the 4th chapter of Luke.
They said, Verily I say unto you, no prophet is accepted. Now that should really read acceptable because of the question of rejection here, and better translations would give us the word acceptable.
No problem is acceptable in his own country, but I tell you of a truth, many widows were an Israel in the days of Elias, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, when grace banged us through all the lands. But none of them was Elias then save unto Sorrepto city of sightings unto a woman that was a widow. And many leopards were in Israel in the time of Elijah as the prophet, and none of them was cleansed, saving name in the Syrian.
Now this passage of scripture gives us the key to the ministry of Elijah and Elijah.
We find the Lord here in his rejection because Luke gives us the rejection of the Son of Man.
And so we have the subject of race coming out.
In this book of rejection, we find that the Lord is setting before them. Now in this matter, the two ministries that he's about to bring to mass, the first ministry takes the character set before him, and he liked his life.
That isn't the subject of repentance.
It takes in the life of the Lord Jesus when he was here, before he went on high.
And if you are familiar at all with these histories of Elijah and Elijah, you'll find that when one ends and the other begins, Elijah is carried into heaven.
And Elijah continues down here in the festival. And so we find that the ministry of Elijah then is that mine of ministry of repentance.
Which was the Lord's ministry when he was here on earth.
But then there's a new ministry that he has when he goes to heaven.
That when he went on high, he gave gifts on the man. We see the Apostle Paul coming forth with a line of truth. It was entirely new.
It has to do with grace, the gospel of the grace of God. It isn't exactly the Kingdom line of things, although that's involved, but it's an entirely new thing, for God is coming out now, hidden before.
To manifest all of you in Jesus Christ, because the Apostle Paul was given to see Jesus not now as a man on earth.
Exalted son of Man.
That's the character, the ministry of Elijah.
Is that part of ministry that sets before us grace?
But my dear friends, tonight.
You'll never understand grace. I'll never understand grace till I first had the ministry of Elijah.
If someone elses that you and I will never know God, do we know something?
All the pride that's found here.
Oh, how slow we are to this bit. But we were singing in that little hymn tonight.
I nothing. But that's where the gospel brings us, isn't it? It gives us to see what we are, and we find in all of these resentments of the ministry of Elijah that Elijah himself has to repent and Elijah has to repent.
And so we find that there's that in the life of everyone of us.
In which we discover the resentment is not an act merely when we receive Christ as our Savior, but repentance is a state of soul.
And then let you and I go along through life conscious of the fact that what we are by nature.
The conscience of the grace that saves them. I'm not being occupied with it, no, but I'd say conscious of it. Because it's our privilege. It's our happy privilege now to be occupied with Christ and the inheritance.
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But you know, dear friends, unless you and I are conscious of what we are, the enemy is going to get advantage over.
And so we have here then robbed before the ministry like him.
And then we have the ministry of Elijah we said before, which brings before the new thing. Before the new thing, Elijah speaks, the ministry of Elijah speak to us.
Is coming in contact with that man Naman, who also was a Gentile.
And upon his resentment, and only the prophet of God, and what the word of God had to say to him.
It's like comes again as a little child. He's a leper.
Now that has to do with a new line of things. It has to do with an entirely new life, a divine life. It's a type of a kind of life that only comes to the sovereign grace of God.
Now in considering these things.
We find that.
Just as we close the ministry of Elijah, as it were, and again the ministry of Elijah, we find that the subject of repentance is prominently brought before us, because the Spirit of God is bringing before us a candidate, shall we say, for the Kingdom of God.
Now let me use that expression. Kingdom of God. We speak here in a moral sense.
That is righteousness.
Peace, Joy of the Holy Ghost is what characterizes the Kingdom of God.
I believe that's the 15th of.
A rolling, isn't it? I'm not sure.
Write this up in peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.
Now in order for that to be brought about, we find the Spirit of God, and that's before us and things for our conscience.
And we have them in the 9th chapter of Luke's Gospel. Now I think of that because it's the explanation of a part of the passage that we read of Elijah tonight.
And I think we should read it first before we go into the ministry.
Of Elijah.
In the 9th chapter of Luke's Gospel.
Dialogue, The 57th verse. We have a new line of things.
And it's called in the way and it came to pass that as they went in the way.
Now what is this way? Speaking of, it's a new way.
And if you'll turn back to the early part of the chapter, you'll find that the Lord Jesus asks the disciples what men say of him. Oh, one of the prophecies returned again. But he said, whom do you say that I am? Oh, you're the Christ of God. Is Peter right? Yes, he was right. But Peter hadn't understood what had happened. All the Lord says, don't tell any man this thing anymore.
The Son of Man has been rejected, rejected, rejected.
And those disciples in the 23rd verse.
If any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow him.
Now that's the first step of a candidate for the Kingdom of God.
Christ has been rejected of the game.
And now he's Speaking of something else.
It's a place in heaven.
There's no place for you on earth. Now. If you're going to follow Christ, you'll have to give up everything here. Oh brethren, this is precious truth was that we laid hold of.
You have to give up everything there. We're going to follow Christ except the man forsake all. These cannot be my disciples.
And so we notice then we're reading it from the 57th verse, and it came to pass that as they went in the way this way.
A certain man said under him. Lord, I will follow thee with us forever thou goeth.
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Jesus selling them. Boxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests of the sun of man does not where to lay his head. You still want to follow me?
Or we don't say that. But what an appeal to the heart. You still want to follow me? You know what it means to follow Christ.
Dear friends, tonight thousands that rallied under the banner of Christianity.
What do they know?
Of following a rejected Christ.
And if we were to ask tonight.
What do I know about it? What do you allow? What was the answer to foxes that hold those clever creatures of nature? They can find a way through this world and arrest him. The birds in the air, which speak to us of the wicked spirits that have control of things down here, they can make their way through here.
But one's following a rejected right. You have no place in this world.
And the closer we get to this world, the closer we are to the Prince of it.
The further we are from Christ.
Now we have the Lord Jesus saying to another Follow me.
The man in the first case suggested, but now the Lord Jesus is asking 1 to follow him.
He said, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father.
Jesus done on him, left the dead, bury their dead. It goes out and treats the Kingdom of God.
Now we see an urgency coming in, in this thing.
The Lord is asking a man to follow him.
Oh, he said. I have something to attend to 1St.
No.
If this man wants to come into the blessing and follow the Lord Jesus to blessings, you'll have to drop everything in time. Why was it that? The servant said to Rebecca's folks, Relatives, Friends?
Well, they said, why don't you tell him 10 days?
No, he says. We're going now.
But going out.
If Rebecca had carried 10 days, she probably would never have come.
Now, when God speaks, it's the time to act.
I remember when my own boy said to me lane delirious on his bed, he said. Father.
If the Lord speaks, will he speak again? It's the Spirit of God speaks. Will he speak again?
You know that boy didn't receive Christ for at least a year after that.
But you know, God was speaking, and there are times when he's speaking.
The Lord is sequel to this man, I think that.
Going to solemn thing, it is when God speaks, What does Peter do? When he spoke, what did Levi do? He up and followed him.
What a solemn thing it is to have to do with God.
And so.
We have again another also said, Lord, I will follow thee, but let me first go and did them farewell, which is whole at my house now. This is the part that connects with Elijah's ministry, and probably was taken from that.
These suddenly had no man, having put his hand to the flower, looking back his fifth for the Kingdom of God. You know, the Lord Jesus said to his disciples once, I'll read his stuff.
We should be very careful how we read the word of God.
I know this scripture has often been used as someone who started out as it were in some mission field and he didn't continue and he came back.
And they say, well, his man puts his hand to the plow, and turning back isn't fit for the Kingdom of God. But what does it say?
He says one who puts his hand to the plow and turns back. He doesn't fit to the Kingdom of God what it says.
So it's a question of distance here for the Kingdom of God.
Christmas.
Or it may involve the servant in the other too. There's a question here of fitness for the Kingdom of God.
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Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand to the plow and looking back, is fit for the Kingdom of God. So now with that in mind, let's turn to the passage we've read in First Kings, the 19th chapter and the 19th verse.
We have a little passage.
First of all, the end of the ministry.
Of Elijah. The name of Elijah means Jehovah is God.
The name of Elijah means Jehovah is salvation.
Now therefore 1 can realize salvation is all you have to know who got it.
He would come to God and believe that he is and that he's a rewarder of them, which diligently seek him, Hebrews said.
And so there has to be, first of all, a sense of what we are in all our ruins.
You realize what God is.
I despair that God produces that.
We have in the Gospel of Luke.
There is God setting before us that precious faith in the Lord Jesus, but as a man.
And one who can open up not only by his ministries, but by his very act, the hidden springs in the human heart.
But at the same time can bring down that measureless grace of God that meets every need as the heart is opened up.
At the same time, in this gospel, we see before us as we meditate on it, the right path for a man, a divine path for a man through a world like this.
The same time.
We see a blessed Savior attracting the heart.
For rebel center to himself.
And drawing the heart, as it were, with according to a man in love, right home to the father that's the 15th of.
Father's House.
But you know, my friend, at the same time, the Lord Jesus does not forfeit one bit of that which belongs to the glory of God is righteousness and His Majesty.
Lord and Savior, what a man, the man of Christ Jesus. And now in this chapter I believe the Spirit of God gives us a little outline.
The beginning of a soul with God.
In other many prophets in scripture, but I don't know of another one that was taken from the plow.
Here's a man that's taken from the plow.
And we find that there were 12 yoke of oxen plowing and he was a 12.
What does that suggest to it?
Can we see to oxen? A yoke of oxen was starting out and as they start out with a plow, the second start out take the next Pearl.
And then the next one until Elijah is the last.
12 yoke of oxygen and we were the last, don't you see, at the end of a dispensation.
The beginning of a new era, a new day.
Is what we have in the essential of John he which was from the beginning.
Oh, it isn't the beginning back in eternity. There it is in John one. But in the epistle of John it's the beginning down here, a new beginning for man. When this world was ruined, not only this whole earth ruined, but man immoral, ruined, and there was no hole.
Blessed faith and the Son of God is a man. Thou that starts a new race. It's called the seed of Abraham in the Epistle of Romans in the second chapter, a new race, the seed of Abraham, the seed of faith, those who would simply cast themselves in all their need on that precious thing here.
Take some hold of him to the Father's house. But now you see.
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In this passage before us.
The beginning of a new era.
Old Catholic man will follow.
To test him, what does he do?
Let the obstacle ran after you light, he said. Let me, I pray thee, kiss my father and my mother, and then I will follow thee. Isn't it so every time?
Didn't Abraham get as far as Heron and Mary stop?
Every time.
All dear fellow Christians, you never take one step ahead.
Bless the grace of God gives you the doing.
There's no room for him pride here. The one who has learned to know something in his own heart was simply what do you find God? Independent.
And that's what brings him along the way.
Because it's God's own prerogative. It's his own choice that you and I are saved at all. We have to learn what dependence is. In the 5th chapter of Hebrews, we find out those two precious, precious truths give us the character of Christianity. It was seen in the captain of our salvation.
Dependence and obedience.
Penance and obedience is what characterizes Christianity.
I can find the bold and loop brought out vividly in the ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Until we find now he's tempted and immediately he turns back to get one more little bit of what he had before.
You know, the expression father and mother here isn't what we often would think. It is just your natural father and mother. That's not the thought at all.
It's the first principle you learn from Saul and Solomon. Turning back to first principle, we had it last night, I believe some of us, we were noticing this one who had tasted old wine, never desired new.
Great sovereign grace and that alone that has done anything for man. And that's what we need to learn. The total depravity of man, The total helplessness of man.
God coming in and the love of his heart.
Taking women, bring it home. And so he says, go back again for what have I done to be?
Ah, this is a process, beloved.
He's drawing him with a cordis of hand. If he had a loose gospel, he's putting him through steps, a little delay in the sea. What effect it's going to have on him? What he's going to do now? Go back again? What have I done to thee?
When it goes back. But notice what he does. Does he go back to his father and mother? No, he doesn't.
The attraction to that man Elijah is so great he has a new object before his soul.
Unless you and I get Christ before our souls is an object.
You're one who fell back. We go back.
We made one in all the religious profession around us. We're brought up as brethren. We may go on as brethren in profession.
But remember, unless Christ is the object of the soul.
You'll not condition you'll not continue.
So what did they do then?
Return back problem. And so it should read the oak of oxen because you see it was the 12Th so he's plowing with it.
It really should read that way.
You better translation. He took the boxes.
And threw them and fall on their flesh. Now what has he done?
Has he made any provision for the Flash? No.
Disgusted right into.
If the principle of circumcision.
Cutting off the flash, the rolling away of the reproach of each.
Now he can't come back.
He slain the oxen with which he was plowing. Everything that belonged to his former conversation is gone. He must go on. Oh, dear Christian, you and I done that, have you?
00:35:09
Are you making provision for the flag?
Oh, I say. These truths are vital, and they're so necessary today.
You either have to have Christ is everything. You're going back. You're going back.
And so it says he flew them. But what does he do?
Why? He turns everything now into a new path, and he boiled the oxen and provide meat for the people of God. So let us bring grace.
Remember the oxen and all the instruments of the oxen.
Or the fire.
That's the judgment. Putting him in the place of judgment where they belong. Because, you know, we never reclaim anything from the flag. Nothing.
The French prophets? Nothing.
But notice what it says. And they did eat.
What does that mean?
Well, it means if you say this fast, your work will be profitable.
Your work will be processed.
There will be a result from it. They did eat.
Well, there's a great deal then, contained in these verses.
In connection with what we have in that turning point in Luke's Gospel Chapter 9.
That's what the spirit of God brings before us there, because the 9th chapter of Luke is the turning point of that gospel, and from then on we have heavenly things. Before that it was the Kingdom.
Now we have heavenly things, and in the last 11Th chapter we find that we're connected with the subject of prayer, he says.
If your Father, if you break, ask your Father for something for a fish, would he give you a stone? And so on. How much more shall not your Father, which is in heaven?
Give good things the Holy Spirit.
That we have introduced the Holy Spirit, which is that person who comes into the believer and dwells there for all eternity.
Because strange as it may seem.
John does not bring us into heavenly things. He brings heaven down here.
But lose because of the path of rejection here takes in heaven's dream.
So in the 9th chapter, we have the Father Himself coming out, and that cloud of Shekinah glory enveloping those disciples as they stand on the mount of consideration. It's the only gospel with us.
And so we see in that same chapter, because they've been rejected and they're following a rejected Christ, He presents to them three heavenly glories that they will participate with Him in our view.
The earthly glory that's spoken of in the 16th chapter of Matthew.
It's not there. It's the heavenly glory that's prominent in the gospel of Luther.
Well, I mentioned this because of the character of it and because of its connection with the type that we're looking at tonight.
And so if we'll turn then to the second chapter, a second.
It would be nice to go through these other pictures of repentance, but I believe it would be more profitable for us now in connection with the subject we're pursuing to notice some things in the second chapter, Second Kings, because it continues the history of Elisha in this particular thing that we're noticing tonight.
The second chapter of Second Kings, and it came to pass when the Lord would take up Elijah.
By our whirlwind.
But he lies. He went with Elijah from Gilgal, and Elijah said unto Elijah, Terry, Here I pray thee, for the Lord has sent me the vessel, and he likes to send unto him, As the Lord liveth in his thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee.
So he went down to Bethel, and the sons of the prophets that were Bethel came forth to Elijah, and said unto him, Noah, thou that the Lord will take away thy master from thy head today? And he said, Yeah, I know it hold you your feet.
00:40:13
And Elijah said, And him, Elijah, Terry, Here I pray thee, for the Lord is 7 to Jericho, he said, As the Lord liveth, and as thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee. So they came to Jericho, And the sons of the prophets that were Jericho came to Elijah, and said unto him, Know about the Lord will take away thy master from my head today. And he answered, Yeah, I know it holds you your peace.
Would like to set an interior ice rating here, and the Lord has sent me to Jordan, he said. As the Lord liveth in his right soul, liveth I will not be thee.
And they too went on. And 50 men of the sons of the prophets went and stood to view far off. And they too stood by Jordan. And Elijah took his mammal and wrapped it together and smelt the waters. And they were divided, hit her and thither, so that they too went over on dry ground.
And again it passed when they were gone over, that he liked it said unto Elijah, Ask what I shall do for thee, before I be taken away from thee?
And Elijah said, I pray that he let a double portion of thy spirit be upon me. And he said, Dollars asked a hard thing nevertheless.
If thou see me when I'm taken from thee, it shall be so unto thee, but if not, it shall not be so.
And it came as fast as they still went on and saw they hold their peers chariot of fire and horses of fire, and part of them both asunder.
They liked it, went up by a whirlwind into heaven, and Elijah's God, and cried, my Father, my Father, the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof, And he saw him no more.
He took hold of his own clothes and wrapped them in two pieces. He took a bottle of the mammal of Elijah that fell from him.
I went back and stood by the Bank of Jordan, and he took the man of enlightened himself from him.
And smoke the waters, and said, Where is the Lord God of Elijah?
When he also had split in the waters, they farted hidden feather and their life it went over.
When the sons of the province which was to view a Jericho saw him, they said the spirit of Elijah just rest on Elijah.
Now here we have.
A continuing picture of the activity.
Of the Spirit of God with the soul was brought into the Kingdom of God.
Righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.
That more permanent thing which has a heavenly character, not just the Kingdom on earth which will be true of Israel the coming day, but that portion that belongs to all those now who have put their trust in Jesus.
It's a marvelous thing to think of the worst that was done for us, but have you ever thought of the work that is being done in you?
Who has passed the gun? A good thing. You will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ, and I believe we have that here.
We see now that Elijah by bringing before the conscience of Elijah.
What he is in himself.
That he has to. He had to be done with everything. We find that now.
He lies. His eyes are fixed on Elijah.
On your side, fixed on Christ.
Are my eye tricks on crime?
The Spirit of God appeals to us as we read these scriptures.
You know that when we get home to heaven, there's going to be one object in heaven.
There's going to be one thing that happened. The object will be Christ and the thing will be a suffering.
Read it in the 9th chapter of Luke, Can you please?
And so we see them.
That he liked as he died fixed on Elijah. And he won't be there. Go away, May. He won't leave him. And you know that's the power of the Christian life.
If he like to go to Bethel, he'll go there.
00:45:01
He didn't say go with him. He didn't say you come with me to Bethel. No, he didn't.
He doesn't enjoy him in the courts a lot.
They're the only permanent cards you know, the only permanent one, because that's what will last for all eternity.
Towards the blood pressure. At the same time there were cords of a man, and we follow that blessed Savior to the Gospel of Luke. You see the man Christ Jesus.
Attracting poor hearts, we've come to the end of themselves. We have no hope, he says. Come with me, I'll take you to the father's house.
They were ready for it. They were ready for it. Dinner, sitting down at the table with him and all their rags and their ruins. And yet they were at home there. Lord, a savior. What a savior. And so now the heart of Elisha has been attracted to Elijah. He won't leave him. He won't be.
But we have some others here. We have the sons of the Prophet.
And there always have been the sons of the prophets, you know.
There may be some here tonight.
Who have taken the name of Christ on their lips, but they know nothing of the experiences of Elijah.
They don't say we will not leave me. They stand far off. They observe. They don't. All the outward forms of it and the doctrines of it, they say your master is going to be taken away from your head today.
They know all about it.
They might be able to give you a clear description of the truths of Scripture. Then you know yourself, but I say that the sons of the rocks.
They don't bother Jordan with Elijah. They don't know anything. What it means to be dead and risen with Christ. They know nothing of that.
They may be able to talk about these things.
That they'll stand as far off of you and after it's all taken place and they're questioning.
That's the size of the problem.
Only the Spirit of God awaken our hearts to realize what it is to follow a rejected Christ.
And so let's notice then we have burnt Gilgal. I don't think this is the Gilgal down by the Jordans.
That had to do with the children of Israel when they came across into the land. I believe this is the Gilgal back in the plane, another Gilgal which is recorded on the map because they came down from yellow golf, you see.
We have here a lovely picture of just what we have in the Tabernacle.
In the wilderness God died some first man black. The 1St place we start with is a very glory of God itself.
Because friends remember.
God's counsels were long before man's responsibility.
Man, this part to build the only comes in and show us what we are so that God can come in now.
Claim that we're chronicled. That's all.
God counted for long before. So we begin at Guildhall when we come down to Bethel. What's Bethel? You know very well in the 28th chapter of Genesis, all the promises that were given to Jacob.
He does our way there until I've done all this and I'm going to bring you back to that one.
With blessing, I will bless thee, Jacob. Put on the provision, Jacob said. If you do this, then I'll do this. God never said a word about what he should do. He says with blessing, I'm going to bless you. That's Bethel.
All the blessings that have been performed now to the work of Scratch.
And so then he goes on to Jericho. But Jericho.
1St place, the experiences coming with him experiencing the glory of God and how a believer now is seated in the heavenly place to think of it. But then we have vessels and promises, and now we've come down to Jerry. So what's Jericho, the place of the curse?
As we find ourselves first of all seated in heavenly places, our hearts rejoice. We find that matchless truth of God, the councils of God. And we have an Ephesians one. And then we see in Bethel how he is. It's the House of God, you know. He's gathered all the children of God around Christ in the center.
00:50:13
But then he wants us to know the character of the scene we're passing through.
Jericho, It's a place where God's curse is.
And it's a place where you and I will find nothing that can satisfy our hearts, and He wants us to know it before he leaves.
He won't be like that at all about them before he leaves it.
And it goes down to the glory. And so we have all the precious ministry that God has given us in regard to these things.
Are we laying hold of it? Do we know what the character of the world is? Are we trying to prove it? You know, there's two ways to discover these things. One is by faith and the other is by experience. But, you know, experience losing stars, face double.
Oh, how sad. The scars. How better. Much better. If you and I just took the word golf, realized this, the path that we're treading is through a wilderness.
Garriga's The place of the curtain.
And so he said, Keep your eyes right straight in front of you. Don't turn the right hand into the left. Go right up. Pay no attention to the scene. Keep your eyes on Christ. What happened to Peter as he walked on the water to go to Jesus?
Designed to the side beginning the same Again, Christ the Lord saved me experience.
I think experience.
But then what did they go?
That is the beautiful language we have here.
Six birds and in light is done on him. Carrie, I pray thee here, for the Lord has sent me to Jordan.
You know, sometimes I think, and I've done it myself.
I tried sometimes to perhaps encourage someone to do something.
Tried to set their path out for them. You know it's not a God. It's not a God. Here's the principle of it. The principle of example. The Lord has set me to this place or that.
Now, if the Lord has sent me and I take that path, then I'm sure that it'll be an example of someone else.
And he said, As this Lord, let us And as thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee, but notice what it says. And they too went on to the union.
Something new has been happening.
Oh, how wonderful.
The heart is an object now, and it has something that interests us that didn't interest it before.
Not now, plowing in this earth, but the design fixed upwards. It goes out in communion. The two went together.
And then the fifty sons of the prophets come in again, oil everything.
Oh, there. Once a night you're either following like Elijah, or you're a human among the people of God. One of the two.
Spoiling everything.
They stood to view the far off.
50 sons of the Prophet stood to view for us, but these two stood. Where did they stand?
By Jordan.
Jordan, The River of Death.
Elijah took his mantle, wrapped it together, and smoked the water, and they were divided, so that they too went over and arrived there. Now I ask you, dear friend, tonight, were you one of these? Were you?
This is the book of Romans.
It's the death of Christ.
You know why the the apostle said to them in Romans. Reckon yourselves to be a dead indeed.
Dead indeed, under sins and so on. Why does he say the reckoning? Because the man still alive, he hasn't crossed joy again.
00:55:04
The river.
Oregon, the Red Sea is a picture to us.
Of the death of Christ.
And the River Jordan is a fixture to us of our death with Christ.
The Red Sea, the crossing of it, is a picture of the death of Christ for.
And all the animals are gone. They see them down on the seashore.
But the River Jordan crossing it and the picture to us of our death and whiskers.
Now we're free, you see?
Free because death frees us. You can't put any planes of any guilt upon a dead man. They're all gone.
So the soul is set completely free now, full liberty following Christ.
And so we see the two of them now across Jordan.
Oh Christ is the one who went down to death for us. But you see, baptism is a picture of our going down with him in it.
And then coming up again, always coming up again.
Now we present to them something new.
Came to pass when they were gone over.
How they got over?
That Elijah said unto Elijah, Ask what I shall do for thee. He doesn't say I'm going to do something for you, he says. You ask what I shall do for me. Why? Because he has the mind of the Spirit now.
Before I be taken away from me and Elijah said, I pray thee, let it double fortune. Thy spirit be upon me. All he wants is double portion of the spirit of that man is the object of his heart. It's a type of crisis.
He said thou hast asked the hard thing. Why did he say that? Because you know.
As far as man is concerned, it's the hardest thing for one to lay hold of a written, glorified strike because it has to be by way of rejection.
It's a hard thing.
The path of following a rejected Christ is a hard thing, and it's only the grace of God.
Can lead a soul in it.
Now what does it involve? Notice.
It's alien. When I'm taken from me, it shall be sore to me, but if not, it shall not be so. Now that's the ministry of the Apostle Paul. The Apostle Paul was smitten to the ground, and he saw the word Jesus not as the disciples had seen him down here.
They're all up there to the glory.
The risen, glorified Christ. That's Christianity. That's the new ministry of Elijah.
This is what characterizes Elijah's ministry.
Renders Laura by country. Now what can he like to do? Go on and dispense the great things been given.
That law Great.
The law was given by Moses.
Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. Oh, what a savior.
Well now one more thing possibly before we close this.
Standard passes. They still went on and talked. It's a lovely picture.
Beautiful picture.
That will be continued when we got home to glory, You know, been interrupted. He's gone on high. He's coming back. And then we'll go on and talk about it. Oh, what a day that'll be. Does your heart gain for it? Have you got your eyes fixed Under Christ, is he the object of your heart? Is he the one that's controlled? You'll pass down here and gives you the power each day.
That behold, there appeared to cherry the fire and horses of fire, and part of them both asunder, and he lied to one up by a whirlwind into heaven.
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And he might have saw it.
A great life out there. And the Father. That's Romans 8. The Spirit in the heart of Christ have a Father. Christianity brings us the truth of the Father. It was never known in the Old Testament.
That's Christianity. It's not just God knowing God is God, but it's now knowing the Father. It's the base lisping out ABBA Father.
That's Christian. And what has happened? Why is having believed you were sealed with that spirit everyone who cried ABBA father's seal?
With the Spirit of God.
And he saw it no more. We won't speak of the Israel and the horsemen that comes in later in life's ministry.
We saw him no more, and he took hold of his own clothes and read them in two pieces.
Why is it that souls, when they finally come to the place where they see themselves dead with Christ, their whole life changes?
Why? Because they get a view of themselves they've never seen before.
And Christ becomes the object and always tinfoil the murder that so attractive natural heart they drop off like autumn leaves.
His own character passes away. It's Christ from now on.
Is Christ replaced on earth because he left here to be a witness and a testimony to the one who's gone on high? A new power possesses his soul, and here is a living witness for the risen, glorified Christ down here on earth. Now we have a picture of the Church.
And you'll notice too, that the testimony rendered by Elijah here.
Is that those who saw it? The fifty sons of the product? They had to bear witness to the fact that the very same power within his master, within him.
And we read the 1St or the 2nd chapter of Peter one Peter, right? We'll read it this way that she should follow any of that, not follow his death.
It's the only way we can do it.
Follow in his death, because you're either living that old Adam life or you're living the new life in Christ Jesus. And if you're living, the new life you'll fall in is death.
Oh, they won't measure.
It's often like a little child who tries to follow his father's footsteps and his footprint is awfully small, but still he jumps into his father's step.
But it's in the same step.
Now he's ready for the Mandel.
Who takes up the mammals?
What is he doing? Same thing is masterful.
It's the same power.
Now he has power to walk through this world, the power of a new life.
He goes back across Jordan. Now what for? Bear with me faster.
And so where does he go? He goes back into these four places that he had been with his master.
But he goes back in reverse order.
He starts the Jordan.
And he goes to Jericho, and he goes to Bethel. And then he goes to Guild call. And then he's home in the Father's house. That's the history of the Church. It's his progress down here. We may have time. The Lord allows us to speak of those things on another occasion.
He took up all the mammal of Elijah that fell from him and went back and stood by the Bank of Jordan.
Seen his death, he took the man of the life of his cell from and waters and said, Where is the Lord's daughter Elijah?
When he often spent the water, they farted, hit her and said this and Elijah went over.
And when the sons of the prophets which were to be with Jericho saw him, they said the spirit of Elijah.
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Just rest on Elijah.
Well, let's sing together then.
In #76 in the back of the book.
Just point out the truth of these two hymns.
In the first one we sang tonight, it says, Jesus my Savior, thou art mine.
But what does this one say?
Dying Jesus bless rather than That's a far higher truth for our souls.
Oh, how precious to know that Jesus is mine, that our soul will go through the experience of Elijah, Elijah. With Elijah, we discover he likes it, He wants it. And we're here. We're here.
Consciousness of possession by him my sheep shall never perish, neither shall any man plus amount of my hand.
Elisha 2
Address—C.E. Lunden
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
The following meeting taken by Mr. Lundeen at Newman Place Hall in Montreal on Friday, September the 28th, 1962. It is the second in a series of lectures on Elisha.
Everything together and #166.
I want you to notice carefully the wording of this first verse. Lord, thou has drawn us after thee. Thou let us run and never tire.
Thy present shall our comfort be Thyself, our hope, our soul desire, our present. Savior. Wild nor fear nor sin can come. It's our fear.
Lord, Lord and.
God.
I am.
100 and I love.
I never.
Say again?
Eyes and Lord.
We turn to the second king in the second chapter again.
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There are different portions here and we'll just consider first.
Down to the 22nd bird.
And you'll have time to consider.
The rest later we were noticing the other evening. It might help us to connect it again, but there are 4 distinct places that Elijah goes with. Elijah too, they started Guild off.
Your dog, you know, was up in the top of the mountains and the plains. It makes us think of the heavenly places.
And from there he goes down. Because God always dark from himself, you know?
All it starts from himself.
So get out of the bathroom. It means the House of God.
Where all the promises were made. Remember the 28th of Genesis?
To Jacob they lay with the stones for Phillips.
The law, you know.
We arrested they have Jericho.
Jericho, the place where there's nothing to sustain a child of God down here. It's this world, it's character and Curtis. But then he goes on to Jordan and he crosses over Jordan with Elijah.
It's our death with Christ.
But after Elijah goes on high, we find that Elijah now reverses the order and he starts back because it's experienced.
If it's got sight of things and his purpose, it starts up there.
It's our experience. It starts down your Jordans.
And so we'll start reading them.
In the twelve birds.
The second chapter of Second Kings and the 12 Birds, and he likes his daughter.
That is, he's going to go into heaven and the whirlwind. And he cried, my father, my Father, the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof. And he saw him no more. And he took all of his own clothes, and rest them in two pieces. He took a ball to the mantle of Elijah that fell from him, and went back and stood by the Bank of Jordan. And he took the mantle of Elijah that fell from him and smoked the water. He said, Where is the Lord's God of Elijah?
When he often spent in the water, they farted together and feathered, and he liked it went over. And when the sons of the prophets which were to view at Jericho saw him, they said, the spirit of Elijah does rest on Elijah. And they came to meet him, and bowed themselves to the ground before him. They said unto him, Behold, now there be with thy servants 50 strong men, let them go, We pray thee, and seek thy master. Let's for adventure. The spirit of the Lord has taken him up and cast him.
Upon some mountain or into some valley. And he said, You shall not stand.
And when they heard Tim kill, he was ashamed, he said. Then they sent their 450 men and they stopped three days, but found him not.
When they came again to him, for he carried at Jericho, he said unto them, Did I not say unto you, Go not.
And the men of the city said under Elijah.
The old I pray thee, the situation of this city is pleasant, as my Lord seeth, but the water is not, and the ground is barren or causes to miscarriage. And he said, bring me a new cruise, and put salt there in. And they brought it to him, And he went forth under the spring of the water, and cast the salt in there. He said thus of the Lord, I have healed these waters, there shall not be from them anymore death or barren land.
So the waters were healed.
Unto this day according to the saying of Elijah, which he speaks.
We have here then.
Elijah request of Elijah.
What he would do for you, he said. I would like a double portion of your spirit.
And so he said, Well, if you see me when I go up, it will be granted you.
Now Israel has a portion of the Spirit in that they are born of God they will be and the nations too that are safe. But it's never said of Israel or the nation that they have the Holy Spirit dwelling within them. They can never stay out of Father.
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No, it is true that God will be known in that coming eternity.
As father to all his creatures. But in a very sense, the church can address him, our Father, but to the nation, he will say in the millennial day, because there will be no nations in the eternal states, you know.
Come you blessed of my Father. You see they'll know him as being associated with the King, and they all know the King's Father. So God, because of the work of Christ and redemption, will be known in that day not only as creator, but God, but he'll be known in that place of nearness to his creature relationship.
That's the result of the word of Christ.
Oh, how much richer shall we say reverently God is because of the work of Christ.
He's going to have children that he can put his arms around. You don't believe it. Look at the 15th of Luke.
Children whose presence, if that is going to have a bride and all the nations, the millennial, they will know him in a new relationship, that is those that are saved.
And Israel, What a place they'll have. But they'll never, Israel, never be able to save as a father.
There's that. That you, as one of the children of God today, can enter into, as we have in this passage of Israel as a nation will not know.
Until we have then the double portion of the Spirit in which we have Father.
Now.
We notice that this comes having believed you were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise in Ephesians One. It's coming through believing.
You know, it doesn't necessarily mean when a man converted that he saved. We use the expression lightly. Conversion means change of mind.
You may not yet have come to the place where he realizes what he's doing.
And so we see in that picture that we'll try to rehearse briefly that we have the other evening what was mentioned in Luke 9, the man putting his hand to the plow and turning back. Because I believe it's most important. And brethren, as we speak of these things, may I say they are most solemn. Why? Because gold all around us are taking up lightly with the profession of Christianity.
The Church peoples are rising.
But where is the heart for Christ?
And you know, brethren, we too are liable to be taken up with something false. We don't have that one, I think, before us. That's Christ. Read the 27th Psalm and read it over and over again.
We have an object for the heart. One thing of our desire, one thing.
And that's Christ.
You know, nothing can satisfy the hearts of our this heart of ours, but a person.
We were so created, Nothing else will do. And if you have a doctrine before you, whatever that doctrine may be, my friend is not enough.
Now we find that Elijah is coming along and he sees Elijah and he's plowing with 12 yoke of oxen and he was a 12.
It's the end of a dispensation.
12 He's 12, ING to the plowing with the 12Th yoke of oxen, the last Yolo.
And so he cast all his sides and followed Elijah. My, how noble that is.
How wonderful. I've been waiting. He's going to be tested and see how wonderful it is.
He runs. That's not an indication of faith at all.
No, no, That's the flash. And so he says to Elijah, I want to go back and kiss my father and my mother.
Elijah says go back again. What have I done to be? You don't know. You're not sent to the Kingdom of God. Any man puts his hand to the plow. That's repentance. Oh, how many have repented outwardly, but they've never gotten down to the roots. Peter didn't get to the roots when he denied that he ever knew the Lord Jesus, and then when the Lord looked at him.
00:15:05
The West Bitterly. He didn't get to the roots.
He didn't get to the roots until the 21St of John.
The Lord says to Peter, Peter, do you love me more than the rest of these? I know he got down to the roof. You think that was Peter's trouble? Prying. Peter was very sorry for his sins.
But he hadn't yet judged pride.
It's one thing to be sorry for your sin, it's another thing to get down to the roots, because when you get down to the roots, there's no more fingers and everything is right.
And you know, we've said it before, but remember, we can't salvage anything from the flesh. It all has to go.
It has to be Christ. And so he says, go back again. What have I done to thee? And he goes back. What does he do?
He plays the oxygen over which he's plowed. You can't go back now. He's brought death in about everything. Oh, you say. Isn't that when he goes through Jordan with him? Oh, yes, it is, But he practically has done it already.
There's a difference from my profession of a thing or what I do in my heart, and that's what we're Speaking of in the ministry of Elijah. I'll tell you why it's in the Book of the King.
And the Book of the King takes up the subject of responsibility.
It's of necessity. So it's the Kingdom character of things. It's responsibility.
You know, it's a wonderful thing to say. Yes, I'm a part of the body of Christ. That's quite another thing.
To walk in the power of that truth, and that's what it like, this ministry says before us. And he liked it.
Brevin, isn't that what we need today?
To know more of what it is to walk in the power of the truth.
Is it in the flesh where to do it? No, indeed. And so we find them that.
Elijah slays the oxen, and then he takes all the instruments.
Plow.
The harness, the yolk, everything goes into the fire.
Nothing. Dresses.
But now he has a new object before him. He takes the option and he boils the oxygen.
Provide mint for the people of God.
So we see the character of His Ministry, Grace.
Now we find he goes and follows Elijah. Now the heart is back. You see, he's cut off everything in the past. It's the cross of Christ. It's circumcision. Everything is cut off. Now there's nothing like.
And you and I made such a clean break as he lighted it.
Well, your enjoyment of Christ will be just in that letter.
Now here we have a life of dedicated to following.
Christ, But still he like it, hasn't gone up. And he's going to test him the same time he's going to bring before him the whole pathway that he's going to walk in.
And so as the and brings it before him. You'll notice carefully that although it may seem the other way.
Elijah goes with Elijah. Notice carefully. That's what it says. Elijah goes with Elijah because it's Elijah's experiences.
As it were, if that experience of first being seated in the heavenly places.
We have here in order is a true Christian doctrine. That's the first thing. That's not the last truth, it's the first one. Because in let you and I know our true position, you can never walk according to a candidate.
So we're seated in the heavenlies. That's the truth of Ephesians.
And then we find all the full makers. We were singing that little hymn tonight and what grace has done for us, the work of Christ, what has brought brought us into. Because you know, if we didn't know that, we would try to do something ourselves, wouldn't we?
But we find that the work of Christ has done everything for us. Everything.
God has never asked us to do one thing.
The work of Christ has done it all.
We can't add to it without spoiling it.
So then, those are the soils, Jericho, the city of the Turkey.
00:20:04
The place where?
Everything is rolling. There's nothing for the new man.
Many leaves endowed the garden with. Two of them went together. Oh, beautiful. You see, they've been drawn closer and closer. Now they can't be separated. And what is it that ties it up? I go through the river chart with.
In debt now to everything here, try to do his options and he sees him when he goes up, he says. It's a hard thing, but if you see me when I go up, your request will be granted. So he goes up and as we rest tonight, Elisha sees it.
And so as he goes back across gardens to retrace in this path, which gives us the pictures of the churches history here on earth.
We finally have the same power as his master.
And we find although the sons of the prophets know all about these things, and they can tell him exactly all of them was going to take place. Yet they in their hearts do not believe it, because they want to go and search and see. Possibly the spirit of God is cast Elijah in the valley.
All the wretched hearts of the religious land.
Appropriate doctrine, Albert Lee, But knowing nothing of Christ ever having gone through Jordan.
Only man take it on the profession. They may have sat at the feet of Elijah, and I'm sure they did all. The scripture doesn't say so, but the evidence is proved that they knew all these truths that he likened it. The sons of the prophets, we see them all around us, perhaps brought up in Christian homes. They know the outward truth, but they know nothing of Christ is enough.
Until we see them as he crosses Jordan.
And there's a positive witness The power of his master is defining.
He has the same power.
Oh, it may not be in the measure of his master is true.
That the Lord Jesus can say is he left his scene greater works than these values because I go to my Father, the Spirit of God that's down in the scene now. And even though man may not see it, there are work being done by the spirit of God which he's using for creatures like man which will be manifested at the resurrection of the death. And so brother let's go on not weary and well doing in as much as he knows.
That your labor is not in vain. In the Lord he'll all be manifested nothing.
Well, he comes to Jericho.
To carry there.
Now the difficulty Jericho is.
As we find ourselves in Jericho, this is the difficulty.
What do we have?
Is is likened to this? That is, as we're there, the city is Clanton. What we have is pleasant, but the question is the power now in connection with the evil that causes the difficulty.
The waters of the plate, the source of all refreshments, are contaminated.
And so we were noticing in Luke's Gospel the other day.
As we were reading it together that.
The Lord Jesus when he came Luke. But his spirit shows us how the Lord Jesus opens all the hidden springs of mankars.
The wickedness is there. There's no gospel like Luke to give us all the openings. It opens heaven for us, and in the 16th chapter it opens hell.
But it also opens its heart, he said. Within himself, it says in the 12Th chapter, the rich man said.
So that was good. Played it for many years. Take my knees, eat, drink, and be merry, God said now this was not a conversation. This was what he was said in his spirit. You'll find it scattered all the way through Luke's gospel.
The 7th chapter. The ancient chapter. The 12Th chapter.
00:25:00
And so on. That's what man's heart says, and it's opened in the.
Heart and light are just insane under the same circumstances, and so we see the hidden springs opened up.
And we find as we go through Jericho, that although we have all these promises of Bethel all over seeded, and having many places in the situation, indeed is pleasant. Dear President, we find that wretched heart with all its springs now opened up.
Why? Because we're in the presence of God.
The one who's going on in his sins, not conscious of what God is, The unbelievers. He hasn't had the springs opened up.
I was a believer because you never can get in the presence of God.
Without your conscience being active, it's impossible because of what God is. But there was you and I have been called to the fellowship of Jesus Christ.
With the Father who was a son.
You know, becomes his presence.
Did we say this was a solemn subject? Indeed it is.
Because they're like this is maintained, you and I will have no fellowship with the Father, with his Son Jesus Christ down here. And then Jericho, to which we're passing, will be a dry scene indeed for us.
Holiness. Become a giant house. Oh God.
And unless you and I know something of that and our experience down here.
We won't enjoy our Christianity as we go through this world, we might be saying. I'm not Speaking of that. We're Speaking of Jericho and the water forming the place. But now there are new springs, you know?
They're new springs. And so in order to see the connection with the New Testament, shall we turn to Mark 9 tonight? If not just 9, Mark nine? We have Luke nine last time.
The 49th verse I'd like to read more, but we haven't signed to think up what precedes which flies more to the unbelievers.
So now the 49th bird, for everyone shall be salted with fire, and every sacrifice shall be salted with salt. Salt is good, but if the salt has lost his saltless, wherewith will you season it? Have solving yourselves, and have peace one with another.
Now the supplies bring primarily to the one who has made the profession of Christ.
Previous birds who tell us what happens to those who refuse to cut off that within America, that is, they refuse repentance.
But here we find that everyone shall be salted with fire. Now we know the illustrations that are used in connection with Israel, how they're going to be brought, and through the refinery fire. That is, they'll be tested as to what God's character is because of the people of God.
And they'll feel them in the coming day. They'll go through the very fire, but you know, fires that was consumed to draw for the believers. It takes away everything that that interferes with the silver manifesting the face of the one who is.
That's melting it. He had to see his face in it and then his rest. All the dross has to go, but with the unbeliever and the fire of God's fault he's consumed.
This is an unquenchable fire forever. Now, due to breakage in the microphone wire, we are unable to record the balance of this meeting.
Elisha 3
Address—C.E. Lunden
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
99 On Christ salvation we are secure. The Rock of Ages must endure, or cannot face the overthrow which rest upon the living stone.
We turn to the second book of Kings.
Second day is the 4th chapter.
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On the 1St 7 verses.
Now they're cried, a certain woman of the wives of the sons of the prophets under Elijah saying.
Thy servant, my husband, is dead, and now know us as thy servant, and fear the Lord, and the creditors come to take unto him my two sons to be bondsman.
And Elijah said unto her, What shall I do for thee? Tell me what? Asked her in the house.
He said thine, handmade, if not anything in the house save a pot of oil.
Then, he said, go borrow the vessels abroad of all thy neighbors, even empty vessels. Borrow not a few.
And when I come in, I shall shut the door upon me and upon my sons, and shall pour out into all those vessels, and thou shalt set aside that which is full.
So she went from him, and shut the door upon her, and upon her son, who brought the vessels to her.
So she poured out.
And it came to pass when the vessels were full. And she said unto her son, bring me out a vessel. And he said under her there's not a vessel more, and the oil stays. Then she came and told the man of God, And he said, Go sell the oil, and pay thy debt. Live thou and thy children of the rest.
I'd like to turn to First Timothy, the third chapter.
Let's think a little of First Timothy first.
First Timothy 3.
On the 14th 1St.
These things write I unto thee, hoping to come unto thee shortly.
But if I carry long, thou mayst know how thou Artest to behave thyself in the House of God.
Which is the Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.
And without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the spirit scene of angels preached under the Gentiles sleep down in the world.
Received up into glory.
Now the Spirit speaketh expressly that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils.
Speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their conscience seared with hot iron, forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meat which God has created to be received with Thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth.
For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused if it be received with Thanksgiving.
For it is sanctified by the word of God in prayer. If outputs the brethren in remembrance of these things, thou shalt be a good minister of Jesus Christ.
Nourished up in the words of faith and of good doctrine, for unto thou hast detained.
The 16th verse.
Take thee unto thyself, and unto the doctrine.
Continue in them, For in doing this thou shalt both say thyself, and then let hear thee.
I suppose some would wonder why we would connect the passage way over in the Old Testament and 2nd King.
With such a package, is there in Timothy?
I suppose, though, that those who have been at these meetings can already recognize that they didn't before, that there is a similarity between the two lines.
Because in the book of the Kings we have that which has to do with responsibility.
And so we have in Timothy.
The Book of Timothy, you know, was not written to the church. It was written to an individual.
00:10:06
But the instruction was that thou mayest know how they ought to behave thyself in the Church of God.
And so we have responsibility Now that is the responsibility, you know, the old nature that can't please God.
Because that old nature is to be reckoned, is gone entirely where new creatures in Christ Jesus.
And the believer now has new desires, new purpose, everything.
All things have become new.
And so now the responsibility that we speak of is that which, having the ability and the power, the Spirit dwelling in us all we need now is the direction which way to go.
The flesh profits nothing.
The God by his Spirit has given us power.
To walk in a world like this to the glory of God.
In taking up the ministry of Elijah.
And Elijah, which was first, we were saying that we have the key to that ministry in the 4th chapter of Luke, where the Lord himself upon his rejection, he tells them.
Of two characters of Ministry.
Now he doesn't just come out and say, well, now there's going to be a change and there's going to be two kinds of ministry. God doesn't do that way. He puts things in a form, like in pictures or parables, so that.
Now spiritual mind is the only one that can discern it. One is born again.
But besides that, what you have is you can't forget it.
You see, because you have an association with something else there. And so he he brings before us the ministry of Elijah and the ministry of Elijah.
Now how do these how are these ministries?
It has spoken out here to teach us anything for our souls, for the present. Well, simply that the ministry of Elijah was that which had to do with the Lord's ministry on earth before he went up, and it had to do with the preparation of the heart and conscience.
It's the ministry of repentance, and we noticed that there were seven pictures of repentance in the ministry of He liked it.
And so in that ministry we have the vessel. Man is seen as a vessel.
We read in our chapter tonight in Elijah. He's seen as a vessel which has to be emptied.
It has to be cleansed and it has to be fitted.
You know, we think of the work of Christ.
In the way that.
He came down to die for us, to put all our sins away and give us a new life. Which is correct. Marvelous truth. Think of it. Four sentences we were. But how seldom we think of that side of things in which now there's a work going on in our souls.
Bringing us up to it in appreciation more of it.
So that we will be able to enter into and appreciate the things of God.
And so there has to be first the cleansing of the vessel.
And then there has to be emptying and cleansing. Then there has to be the fitting of it.
For what's coming.
What's coming there? Why, it's going to be filled with the oil. That's what we have on our chastier tonight.
Fire. Now we don't have to read very far in the Bible to discover what the oil is.
It's the Spirit of God, of course, but in a particular sense.
We have the oil mentioned with the virgins, you know.
In the Gospel of Matthew, some had oil in their vessels with their lands, some had just their lands with no oil.
Well, what is the oil lamp? Well, the oil is the present ministry of the Spirit of God and our soul. That's the oil.
It's the whole present day that's characterized by the Spirit of God.
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The Lord should say when he went away. It is expedient for you that I go away, for when I go away the Comforter will come.
And in the 16th chapter of John, we learned that he will lead you into all these truths that should read.
Who is He speaking to His disciples that were following him?
Now in the 14th chapter of John.
Remember, John's ministry in the Gospel is individual. It's not the corporate thing like the church, but it's the individual Christian. It's bringing us up to that individually.
And so on the 14th chapter, we learned that when.
The Lord goes away. We find the Father is going to send the Spirit.
In the 15th chapter, when the Lord goes on high, he is going to send the Spirit, and in the 16th chapter the Spirit comes of his own.
What does that take them? Ah, that all the persons of the Godhead are interested in this thing. Each one or one mind that is this. So what? What is it that's in view?
Is it to have a people individually in the enjoyment of their blessings? Yes, indeed, there's that.
But you get the whole thing in Ephesians 1.
Now, some of you here are reading Galatians if you continue, maybe in Ephesians if you want to notice this. When you read Ephesians, in the very first chapter where you usually get the key, you'll find these three things.
1St is adoption.
Now that brings in the thought of children. We have the sons there too, but it's adoption now that's individual blessing and blessedness individually.
But you get something else.
You get after you believed you were sealed. Now that's corporate letting.
You get the three things in the. In the first chapter you get, I should have said, the inheritance. You get the adoption first, then you get the inheritance in whom you have received the inheritance, and then you get after you believe you received. Those are the three things.
The individual blessing comes first, the corporate blessing comes second, and the house character comes last.
Now what is the house character? It's the Spirit of God indwelling the believer now, as we find on the day of Pentecost.
The believer is entwelled by the Holy Spirit, but something else takes place.
There's a company formed and it's called The House of God.
He'll turn for a moment to the second chapter of Ephesians.
Just a verse which may help us believe this is a very important subject.
Where do I hold them, especially in days like this?
In the second chapter of season.
The 19 first Now, therefore, ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the Saints and of the household of God.
And you're built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone.
In whom all the buildings that they framed together grows into a holy temple in the Lord. That's the ultimate thing. It's growing now. It isn't complete yet until the church is caught whole.
There's not a vessel. More we read tonight. That's it. Not about the Lord. And then the whole church is caught home to glory. But now notice the 22nd verse.
Whom ye also are builded together. That's right now.
Or a habitation of God through the Spirit.
That's the problem we are billed as it's together. One more for habitation of God. Now we have the Spirit mentioned here.
Well, that connects with our subject tonight then.
Habitation of God right here in this world now.
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But we'll notice a few things in Timothy before we go to the ministry of Elijah again.
We were saying the other evening that there is no use of reading the Old Testament and trying to understand it except in the light of the news.
Because the prophets who wrote it perhaps didn't understand it themselves, they searched their own scriptures.
See what they meant? The ones that God had used to write them.
But you see now the Spirit of God has come, and in that verse in the 16th of John, he's going to open to us all the truth.
That is, if we want to want to have it open to it.
It depends on how much we want, but I mean, he's there to open it all if we want.
All the truth.
But then there is something else. And there is a place where he's pleased to open it. Nowhere else. Be sure of that.
There's a place where he's pleased to open it to us.
Now, both the passages we read tonight give us this picture.
As to how it's done, what is the exact doctrine in Timothy and the other is a picture in the Old Testament?
But we'll notice the doctrine first and then I think we can understand the thing better.
In that third chapter of First Timothy, the apostle says these things right eye under the heel, hoping to come under these shortly. But if I carry laws.
Now what he does, if I carry long, he's Speaking of that 2000 years in which the Church has been here on earth.
Because the Apostle Paul is setting before us.
Not himself, but his ministry.
His minister. And so the Church has been on earth now almost 2000 years.
But now then, he's going to carry long. There's certain things that are necessary as to how we should behave ourselves.
In the House of God.
And so it says here.
The House of God, which is the Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.
Well, this is rather remarkable, isn't it?
What is the House of God?
Well, this scripture says it's the Church of God.
What else is it?
It's a filler and ground of the truth.
Is he Speaking of something that's going to take place in the distant future when we're caught home into heaven? I think not.
He's Speaking of that which is taking place right now and that which God has set up as a habitation, His habitation on the earth. Why?
Well, turn to the second of Ephesians. The third of Ephesians will see why.
The dead burst.
We read the ninth verse.
And to make all men see what is the administration of the ministry which from the beginning of the world has been hidden, God, who created all things by Jesus Christ to the end, stand up now under the Prince of families and powers in heavenly places might be known by the Church, the manifold wisdom of God.
Well, that's now then, not only to the men everywhere, but to the principalities and the powers in the heavenly.
And I believe it's Peter that tells us which things the angels desire to look into. And have you studied the Tabernacle of old? You would see on the mercy seat to cherubim, with their faces inward and downward as they spread their wings over that mercy seat. What are they looking at? What they're looking at? That precious blood that's on the mercy. Which things the angels desire to look into. What is it? What's the marvelous wisdom of God? What is that?
It takes 4 wretched sinners that are on their way to hell.
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And form them into one body first to be the testimony of God on the earth.
And then to be with Christ wherevers his companion, for all he can.
Now that's marvelous.
Well then, back to Timothy.
But if I very long that thou mayst know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the House of God we stand the line of truth that we have, and the king just responsibility. And so it isn't Timothy.
Do you think God wrote this just so we can take and read it lightly? No, my friend. This is going to be a record at the judgment seat of Christ as your behavior in life. How we treated the scripture like this.
To say there's just ordering Christendom. Why?
Because the scripture has been violated.
Men have no regard for that which God set up. He sets up his own things. He has no regard for the Spirit of God. He sets himself up to take the place of the Spirit of God.
God gives us order His old order. Adult is the Church of God.
The Church of the Living God. Contrast idols.
Contrast everything that man has set up. It's the living God. Not men and their dead works, but it's the living God. And now this Church of the living God is found to be the pillar.
And the ground of the truth.
Now is this is this Church of the living God composed of those who are on the earth here, and then some of diving God to heaven? He doesn't speak of it that way here.
It's being of an actual thing on the earth that represents God down here in this world.
And it represents this represents God as the pillar and the ground of the truth.
Would that be the case? But then unless the place represents God in truth.
You can't be the Church of God.
Get it or it can't be the house and stuff in that sense.
Because what characterized the House of God and the Church of God is that it's the pillar and ground of the truth.
Now these things are solemn because if God in olden days set up Jerusalem as a center where the truth was given out.
Well then all the nations of the earth who wanted the truth would have to come Jerusalem together.
Now this is God's doing, you know.
It's remarkable we don't have much here about.
The the things that we have in Ephesians, one that we're Speaking of.
That is the side of truth were were accepted in the beloved in that line of things. We don't have that here, because what he's bringing before us here is that side of responsibility, you see, not the other side. The other side is true. But that isn't the subject here. It's a question of how you and I are going to behave in the face of all the truth that God has given us in this day.
Are we going to recognize the truth center that God himself has set up?
Where the truth is known, and only where the truth is known in this entirety.
Now we have in connection with that the truth itself.
Without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness. It's a mystery to everyone except those who have been brought into the good of it.
God is manifest in the flesh.
That was in the first one that he's done.
You hold that through.
Is that the center of the truth? If I would, you stand God was manifest in the flesh and the person is Jesus.
Justified in the spirit.
There was only one man that ever walked through this world.
That could say, if I had not done among you the works that none other man did, she did not have sin.
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Justify the spirit.
How the manifestation of the Spirit in his works down there.
He was the only one who can say which of you convinces me instead, That was the Lord Jesus Christ.
No other could say that.
Justified in the spirit.
Behold that truth.
Do you? Do you hold that truth? He's the only one. He's the only one. My friend. If you if you rest your soul on any other, you'll be disappointed because of that sacrifice that's put away all your sins was not made by the Son of God himself, the Holy One. You have no savior.
Sea of Angels. Oh, think of it.
In the second chapter of Luke, we find the whole heavenly host coming down, worshipping their creator. Saw him for the first time. It's a little babe in a Manger.
First time that they ever saw their creator.
And this one, who was known in relationship to Israel is the Jehovah bold. And now he's made himself known to the Gentiles.
In the fulfillment of God's promises to Abraham.
See, this takes in the whole scope of truth. It doesn't give us the details of it, but it gives us the scope of it.
Received the lay down in the world. Oh, thank God. Don't have to leave Donnie And my dear friend tonight. Are you trusting in the precious blood of Christ? Can you say He's my savior? Can you believe down in the world Because all those who believed on him in this world.
It's all away now.
He's coming. He's going to take us home to the father's house. Will be his companion forever, those who believed on him in the world.
Received up in the glory.
God and he speaks it God's right hand.
You know, some people today have a dead savior. They don't know any Christ any further than that. He went into the grave for them. That's all I know.
You're surrounded by them and my friend, he's gone on high and he's coming back again.
He's coming to take his own home and then he's coming back to judge this world.
Now, what we read in the 4th chapter is a warning to us that unless you and I find ourselves at the plate of God's appointment holding these truths, we're going to find ourselves probably in difficulties.
The connection of what set before us in the next chapter.
You and I are either under the control of the Spirit of God over life, or to get under the control of another spirit.
As we have in the next chapter.
The dooping spirit, and this is a warning aggressive them because my friend, the way Christian demands is that it's been fellow with delusion. After the true church is taken out, the great apostrophe is coming on.
And will envelope Christendom all those who refuse to take their place, but the truth of God, and the truth held in the place where Christ's name is death.
Now on the 16th verse again we say this is individual.
As to his expectation here.
Is that take heed unto thyself.
And under the doctrine teaching.
Just what we've had in the 16th verse.
You take aid onto it. Why should we take heed? He wouldn't tell him to take heed if there wasn't a danger.
And they're coming, wrapping on your doors every day. And if you don't take heed, if you don't go on in the truth that you know, vow to it and act upon it, you'll find yourself in trouble.
Take heed unto thyself. He's talking to Timothy of beloved servants. He's warning him, continuing them. Or in doing this I shall both say thyself. Does he mean he'll save himself from hell? No, he's not talking about that. He's talking about the testimony of God on the earth.
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He invited himself outside of us, under delusion. If he's a real believer, he won't lose his soul because my sheep shall never bury, but he'll lose his sight like Samson did.
Below the spiritual sight, and probably his reward, which he might have had if he walked in the path of faith.
Don't take heed to the doctor.
During that basketball save thyself and them that hear them, because there's somebody watching you all the time. And whether you're preaching the gospel or whether you're simply walking in the path of faith, there are eyes upon you and you're guiding someone either a right or you're guarding them in the wrong path.
Well then there is a standard.
That God is set up, and in that center there is the truth that he is placed there.
I know men say well to talk that way. That's pride. Is this pride? If it's in God's word and he tells us whose pride is it?
The point is, are you and I'm going to find ourselves on the place where God himself has set? The truth is that the House of God is the Church of the living God.
The pillar in the face of the truth.
Now are we going to find our place there?
For God himself has said it.
Might save herself from these seducing spirits, my friend.
It will eventually envelope the whole thing. What about the 11 and the three measures of meals?
And what about the?
What we had the other evening what was shred into the pot.
The food that was prepared for the people of God. Someone shred the wild doors in and they cry out.
There's death in the past.
Oh yeah, And now, as we were noticing in real life's ministry, we bind first the repentance of Elijah, and he determines he's going to follow Elijah with all his heart. He follows him down through Jordans, and he sees him going to heaven. He comes back over Jordan in the power of the Holy Spirit and the spirit of his master, and he goes back in this reverse order, following those four different places where his master has been.
Until he comes to Gilda.
We've seen the path of the individual believers, the purpose of heart, following Christ. At the same time, we saw the picture of that extended over the whole period of these 2000 years. We saw the picture of Jordan, Jericho, Bethel and Gilgal. But now the Spirit of God is bringing us right down close to see a picture of the assembly. The truth is.
And so I'm turning back then to the ministry of Elijah in the 4th chapter.
Perhaps we can have a picture of just what we've been speaking.
Second Kings 4.
Now, those of you who may have another translation, I want to call your attention to the fact that.
In the first verse, it should be children. I don't know why the translators reversed it.
Should be children and in the seventh verse it should be done.
I don't know why, but that's the way it is in this translation. It is not that way another.
The first thought we have here is children.
Children.
Adoption, isn't it?
If the first thing we know and the things of God, the children of God by faith in Christ.
It's the Barney we were Speaking of the other day. It's the first perceptions in the soul of dividing things. The little 1 cries out ABBA father. Oh, how precious. And you know, my friend, everyone that can cry have a father is one of the children of God.
While I was right at the Lord's table too.
Who cry of the Father.
No, it isn't a question of intelligence. It's a question of nature.
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Because new creation isn't a question of time or place, but kind. But kind are you? What nature do you have? Are you in the place? Are you in Christ? Are you an atom? Or are you one of the children of God? Can you cry on the Father? You can if you have the Spirit indwelling.
That's the first thing.
We said that Elijah was a picture.
After Elijah borne in the picture to us.
A price was on high, sending a spirit down and working through his servants down here. That's the picture we have in the ministry of Elijah Christ having now gone on high, He sent down his spirit.
And works through his servants down here.
So we see like Elijah brought into this picture.
Now you notice carefully that this woman is not a widow. It doesn't say she's a widow, but she she has lost her husband.
Well, you say, Well, if she's lost her husband, she's away, isn't she? But it doesn't say so.
Now here's all seen as a widow, but the church is never seen as a widow, seen as a merchant.
And in the 25th chapter of Matthew you'll find that.
It's the virgins who have the oil.
It's a picture of the present day for those who carry the oil and their vessels.
But here is just a woman and son in scripture is whole.
Christ was the home of Israel, the Son they were looking for.
So we have in this first verse and children.
But.
If this woman comes to cry to Elijah.
Why? She says I serve it, My husband is dead.
And I know it's a tight serve, and despair The Lord and the creditors come to take unto him my two sons or children to be bottomed.
Well the second verse, Elijah said unto her, What shall I do for thee? Tell me, what hath thou in the house?
She said thine hand may not anything in the house save a pot of oil.
There are the case where.
This woman cries to the prophet of God.
And in these first two verses, she sets before us her knee.
And we see also the resources for that need, although she doesn't herself recognize them.
When you and I are first born again, little did we realize either Our Calling or the resources that God is placed here to bring us all the way through.
But you know Price died once and you'll never die again.
And when he died, the whole work was completed.
There will be no more work done. Except, of course, he's coming to take the food, raise our bodies.
To be like his own body and glory. But as to the work itself, it's all done on the cross.
There doesn't need to be any more work done because he said it was finished, It's all finished.
And the Apostle fall in the first chapter of Ephesians, if you'll notice it carefully. He's not praying for anything, but he just prayed to have their eyes open. But they might understand and see what would happen when Christ rose from the back.
He doesn't pray that they might have power. He prays that their eyes may be open.
In other words, you and I have to have faith, simple childlike faith, to lay hold of the things of God. Now here's the poor woman. She has no resources, she thinks, and yet in her house are all resources she needs in these 7 verses proven.
What are they? The pot of oil?
Now you notice that he asked her a question and he doesn't let her answer it.
What shall I do for these? Tell me, what has thou in the house because he's speaking to her conscience? You and I never get any truth except through the conscience. And we never get any new truth until God comes in and awakens us and gives us that truth.
Neither will we get anymore truth until we acted on the truth he's already given us and open our eyes to see.
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And my dear friend, if you're going on year after year, not going in any way, and the things of God, remember there's something there that's wrong.
You're either not acting on the truth that you know, or you're allowing sin in your life. One of the two.
If you and I act on the truth that God has given us, you'll give us more to over the solemn thing it is to pray for life.
So God has given us all, right?
And if you and I walk in the light we have, we'll just get some more because it's all there. You won't get the next step until you take this one.
So now this woman is seen as a picture of the assembly here on earth. God's people. Just what we had in Timothy, only in a far different way.
Which I believe will give us the seed a picture.
That if we want to see it, we'll be absolutely clear as to the truth what God means First Timothy, the House of God, which is the Church of the living God, the pillar and the face of the truth.
She said that I had made us not anything in the house.
Save a pot of oil. Little does he know that that pot of oil is not only going to.
Deliver her son.
From the creditor.
For hope everything. But she and her house are going to live on that oil. Little does she know that.
So that's what's going to take place.
You know, when I read this verse, what happened on the House?
It comes over to my own conscience. What do I have in the house? Oh brethren, what are we allowing our houses? What do we allow in our houses? Do we have just what this widow has in and nothing more? Because the oil speaks of the Spirit of God, the present testimony of that Spirit.
And as the King speaks the responsibilities it teaches us of our responsibility in connection with that truth. You know, the Lord told his people of old that when he walked through their camp, he didn't want to see anything that he filed if there was anything dead, and they walked through the camp and saw they were to bury it.
Because when he walked through their camp, he didn't want to see anything that he filed.
Oh my friend, what do we have in our house? What do we allow in our house? Is it hindering our spiritual growth? This widow had a pot of oil, that's all.
Is Christ enough for us, ministered by the Spirit, or do we have to have all the things of that this world would offer to entangle our souls until we lose our spiritual sight entirely? Isn't it so?
Then he said, now we have the instructions, the 1St 2 verses are the need.
And the remedy? The next two are the instructions. Then he said to bar the vessels abroad of all our neighbors, even empty vessels. Borrowing out a few now you see the connection with Elijah's ministry. In Elijah's ministry, the answer the vessel is emptied and planned and prepared. And he likes his ministry.
The ventil is ready now to fill with the oil. It's an empty vessel.
And you know, brother, when souls are received in among the Saints as vessels, and then I received this empty vessel.
There's a lot of difficulty sometimes.
The priest that is in those days should be able to discern whether the vessel was empty or not.
If it isn't empty, it isn't ready to be filled with the oil.
The oil is the spirit of God that's ministered in the bosom of the assembly.
The present ministry of the Spirit of God.
Now the gold bar of the Vessels of All My Neighbors is really the gospel going out bringing in the vessel.
But going out from the midst of the assembly, outside the assembly that God set up on the earth.
Burn out of fields whosoever will make up, but when they're brought in, they should be empty.
It should be empty.
How can you fill a vessel with two things at once?
Can you fill it with the world in Christ too?
When I come in now we have another truth, separation. We have an inside and we have an outside and in the true Church of God as to representing Christ on the earth.
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There is a within and there is a without.
Now within another.
When I come in now, just shut the door upon me and upon my son. Now you notice that, sons.
Because it's the dignity of the new position and.
Those that are empty vessels to be filled with the spirit of God. It's a lovely picture, Anthony. Vessel inside of the closed door now ready to be filled with the oil.
Shut the door by me.
All I have done is you shall pour out into all those vessels.
And thou shall set aside that with his flow.
Well, our time is slipping away, but.
Just there there shall be deserved in the assembly to know when a vessel is closed.
All this should be discernment.
And when God raises up one to go out to gather other vessels, then there should be discernment. Could be a help to such a one. You know the natural heart, how we like to pick one another to pieces. I might as well be friends. It is natural to us, isn't it? And we allow the flesh to act instead of the Spirit. And we are looking for lots of growth sometimes. And we should look for a heart for Christ and these things.
And so we should encourage that when we see that the vessel is full.
And we should encourage that service of going out to gather another vessel.
If the vessel has been first empty.
Well, these are many lessons we have here. We must carry on.
So she went from him. Now she's obeying the instructions.
The first two verses are the need and the remedy. The next two are the instructions and now the obedience of faith. It takes them up. And so we learn new truth.
God double repeat himself.
So he went from him, and he shut the door upon her, That space. Are you inside of the closed door, or you say, well, I can just meet with any of the people of God and it's all right?
No, it isn't. All right, you know why? Because maybe they're not holding the truth without controversy. Great is the mystery of God in this.
Thought is manifest in the flesh and so on.
It's where that truth is held, the pillar in the base of the truth. If you're not there, why you're not behind the the closed door? You can't expect the vessel to be filled with the last.
God tells us that where he is, the place must be holy and if there's allowance of doctrinal.
Or moral evil.
Is not holy, is not clean.
And so there's the, she shot through the door.
Upon her.
Those, and only those, who are in the enjoyment of the new position.
At this position, brain.
That these truths bring to us that we have in First Timothy 3.
She went from him, and shut the door upon her, and upon her son, who brought the vessels to her now who brought the vessel to her.
And I started to remember both of them and the assembly went out and they brought the vessels back into the assembly.
The ministry of the gospel is always in view of the center that God set up. Why? Because if she don't have a home, they'll just get scattered again.
And their case will be worse than the 1St.
Because it's there. They're established in the truth. It can't be established unless they're inside both the closed doors, separation from evil, doctrinal and moral evil, with one pure object before them, ministered by the Spirit. That's Christ.
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And she poured out.
And she bored out.
These guns go out, and they gather the vessels in empty vessels, many as they can, and in the bosom of the assembly. The Spirit of God is freedom, ministers, the things of Christ that makes them grow.
And it came to pass, when the vessels were full, that she said unto her son.
Now we have individual, not the collective testimony 2 and 3 going out. It's still the dignity of that new position. It's done, but it's individual, It's responsibility.
Bring me out a vessel.
Royal National There's not a vessel more.
Not about the Lord. And the oil stayed. Now does it say the oil stayed and then there were no more vessels brought in? No, it didn't say that. No God waits until the last one is brought in, Then the oil state. You get the rest of the picture.
Both in the 25th of Matthew and in the second chapter of Second Thessalonians.
In two Thessalonians, the Spirit of God is taken away from the earth at the same time that the assemblies taken away.
Because, my friend, remember when the Spirit of God comes out and dwell, you'll never leave you forever.
Never leave you forever. The Scripture teaches us that.
Forever.
Oh, what a blessed truth. And we're going to be taken home at the same time as the Spirit leaves.
So the next verse is the judgment seat of Christ.
No, I don't want you to misunderstand me tonight. As we said before, we're just drawing a picture here. There's a moral line of truth that runs all the way through it. Elijah's ministry and Elijah and no doubt a prophetical line as well. And I'm not trying tonight to bring out either one of those lines.
All we're trying to do is as we read the New Testament, we're trying to just go back and pick up a little picture. You see, we can't even call her the site. It's just a little picture that gives an outline. How many times when one speaks, one may draw a picture from the world, even some happening that happened. But how much better when we draw out a picture that God himself placed in his words years before.
Hundreds of years ago.
Just to give us a little glimpse, A clearer glimpse of the truth of God that we have in the New Testament.
And so now we have then just a picture here.
Then she came and told the man of God.
It's a little picture of what's going to take place.
After the oil space.
Now what is discovered in his presence after that's all over?
And he said go sell the oil to pay thy debt. Now buying and selling in scripture does not necessarily refer to the fact of your making a purchase.
It's the evaluating of it, the discovery of what it's worth.
At that time of buying or selling, you discover what it's worth, don't you?
Now what they are worth. You know what the oil is worth. Do you know what it's worth to have the spirit of God come down from heaven to indwell each believer and the assembly on earth? What is it worth?
What's the value of it today? The world says nothing. In fact, Christendom says nothing. They put a man in place of the spirit.
They set the spirit of the size not only grieving, but quenching the spirit of God.
And so the Church will know on that day the value of the coming of the Spirit of God.
Hey, like that.
All the present testimony of the Spirit of God. In it we find that the the death of the believers, all faith, the word of Christ, is covering everything.
And now what else? Live thou like children of the wrath?
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Thy sons should read in this verse.
That's everlasting life in connection with that new position that we have in Christ, once beggars of the dumbbell, now to inherit the throne of glory, to be associated with Christ forever.
In his own home, the eternal Son, we're accepted in the beloved one, that's the ministry of the Spirit of God. For today we're children by adoption, in whom you have received an inheritance and a part of the household of God.
Oh, what truth the spirit of God has brought us in these laughter days. Revive force again. Do we value them? We'll know them only in the measure in which we walk, in the good of them as we hear them. And we'll learn them only where God is pleased to place His testimony.
And the Spirit in the midst to teach the things of Christ to us. And that's the place where he's chosen to set the name of Christ.
In the midst of the House of God, which is the Church of the living God, the pillar, and the base of the truth.
Now it's up to you and me to discover what that is.
Because there's only one body, and there's only the representation of that one body.
God has not set up anything else.
The public representation for God has made a place where he should dwell right now, here in this world, in the midst of his people.
It's the place behind the closed doors, separated from evil, where the truth of God are made known by the Spirit, and all we need there is what the Spirit himself brings.
Do we value when the spirit is brought, or do we push to the side so we introduce men's traditions and the thoughts of man? Or are we just subject as we have here?
Subjection to what God himself by the Spirit would bring to us in peace are the precious things of Christ.
Until you have a known virgin, so also add oil their vessels of their land.
And they stood beside the path, waiting for the bridegroom. They with all of them went to sleep. All of them went to sleep. But there was a midnight cry made. And those who had oil and their vessels with their last one into the merits, but those who had no oil, they went to buy when it was too late. And they were the ones who stood outside the door, And they knocked Lord open to us.
But it was too late. I know you're not far from me. Workers of beneficiary.
Oh, what a marvelous thing to know something of the present testimony of the Spirit of God in the place where the Spirit of God is to open up the truth of God through our hearts for God himself, except the name of Jesus.
It's up for up to you and me to discover where that place is.
The bout of the truth of God, or to be in danger of all the seductions and delusions of the enemy.
Little by little he wears away those who want and taken their place for the truth. And then he scattered them far, far away, until they're lost and delusion. The end of this age will be one of Duluth. Shall we sing #72 in the back of the book?
The path of knowledge, that dear love of dying, My Jesus, Savior, you have to soul. The mind would have thy love and all its breadth and length and height and depth and everlasting strength no more and more.
My.
Friend.
Everything hard.
Of mine, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. Brave.
When?
Elisha 4
Address—C.E. Lunden
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
So we've been together #290.
Why are those fears? Behold to Jesus, hold the hell and guide the ship.
Present sales and catch the breeze of central Western through the.
To the region where the mourners these two weeks.
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Connecting it with a New Testament, a few verses in Colossians, The Epistle of Colossians.
Lawson's the third chapter.
I'll read one or two words a little different than it as it appears in other translations.
The third chapter of Colossians, then she then be written with Christ. Seek those things which are above where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God.
Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth for years dead, and your life is hit with Christ in God.
When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall he also appear with him in glory.
Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth.
Fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil, concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry, for which things take the wrath of God, cometh on the children of disobedience.
I'd like to read a passage turning back to Philippians.
The last chapter.
It can be nicer to keep these passages in mind as we read later in The Ministry of Elijah.
The fourth verse of the 4th chapter of Philippians.
Rejoice in the Lord. Always and again I say, rejoice, Let your moderation be known unto all men. The Lord is at hand. Be careful, for nothing but in everything by prayer and supplication with Thanksgiving. But your request is made known unto God, and the peace of God which passes all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Finally, Brethren.
Whatsoever things are true. Whatsoever things are honest. Whatsoever things are just whatsoever things are pure.
Whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report. If there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things, those things which you have both learned and received, and heard and seen in me do, and the God of peace shall be with you.
Now turning to the.
4th chapter of Second King.
We try to connect these passages.
We'll start with the eighth verse.
The 4th chapter of Second Kings.
And it fell on a day that Elijah passed to Shunam, where was a great woman.
She constrain them to eat bread, And so it was that is off to be passed by. He turned in scissors to eat bread. And she said unto her husband, Behold, now I perceive that this is an holy man of God, which passes by us continually. Let us make a little chamber. I pray thee on the wall, and let us set for him there a bed, and a table, and a stool, and a Candlestick. And it shall be when he cometh to us that he shall turn into this.
And it fell on the day that he came together, and he turned into the chamber.
And lay there And he said, The guy died. His servant called his unified. And when he had called her, she stood before him. He said unto him, Say now unto her, Behold, thou hast been careful for us with all this care What is to be done For thee? Would thou be spoken for the king, or to the captain of the host? She answered, I dwell among mine old people.
And he said, What then is to be done for her? Because I answered, verily, she has no child, and her husband is old. And he said, call her. When he called her, she stood in the door. And he said, about this season, according to the time of life, thou shalt embrace the sun. And she said, Nay, my Lord, thou man of God, do not lie unto thine handmaid.
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And the woman soon stays and bear a son at that season that Elijah has said unto her, according to the time of life.
And when the child was grown, it fell on a day that he went out to his father to the Reapers.
And he said to his father, his father, my hand, my hand. And he said to a lad carrying to his mother. And when he had taken him and brought him to his mother, he sat underneath till noon, and then died.
And she went up, and laid him on the bed of the man of God, and shut the door upon him, and went out.
She called under her husband, and said, Send me, I pray thee one of the young men and one of the ***** that I may run to the man of God and come again.
And he said, Wherefore wilt thou go to him today? It is neither new moon, nor Sabbath. And she said, it shall be Well. Then she saddled an *** and said to her servants, Dr. And go forward, slack not thy writing for me, except I did me. So she went, and came unto the man of God to Mount Carmel. They came to pass, when the man of God saw her afar off. And he said to his eye his servants.
Behold, Yonder is that Shunilite.
Run now at Brandy to meet her and stay under her. Is it well with thee? Is it well with thy husband? Is it well with the child? And she answered it as well.
When she came to the man of God, to the hill, she caught him by the feet against I came near to thrust her away.
And the man of God said, let her alone, for her soul is vexed with dinner, and the Lord has hidden from me and has not told me.
Then she said that I desire a son of my Lord. Did I not say do not deceive me.
Then he said the gays died. Geared up thy loins. Take my stab in the right hand and go thy way.
If thou meet any man, salute him not, and if any salute thee, answer him not again, and lay my staff upon the face of the child.
And the mother of the child says, As the Lord liveth, and as I shall liveth, I will not leave thee.
And he rose and followed her.
And as I passed on before them and laid the staff upon the face of the child, but there was neither voice nor hearing wherever he went again to meet him and told him, saying the child is not awake.
When Elijah was come into the house, behold, the child is dead, and laid upon his bed. He went in therefore, and shut the door upon him twain, and prayed unto the Lord. And he went up, laid upon the child, and put his mouth upon his mouth, his eyes upon his eyes, and his hands upon his hands. And he stretched himself upon the child in the flesh of the child waxed warm. Then he returned, and walked in the house to and fro.
And went up and stretched himself upon him in the child's knees seven times.
And the child opened his eyes, and he called in his eyes and said call Miss Shunamite. So he called her. And when she was coming on to him he said, take up thy son.
Then she went in and fell at his feet and bowed herself to the ground and took up her son and went out.
We've already been noticing.
As we started in the first part of this.
Line of things in regard to Elijah that we find Elijah at the plow.
Rather unusual thing to see a man was to be a prophet God at the plow.
When we found that that connected with the subject in the 9th of Luke, where we have the turning point in that gospel with the Lord, Jesus is rejected and he began Speaking of the Kingdom of God and of the Son of Man as the rejected 1.
And so we find that.
As Elijah comes along, he cast his mantle upon Elijah, and Elijah attempts to follow him, but he tells him as Elijah says I'll go back and kiss my father and mother. He says Go back again. What have I done to thee?
And so Elijah. Elijah Perceiving.
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What it was about?
The spirit of God laying hold of him and giving him to discern, instead of going back to kiss his father and mother, he goes back and he plays his oxen with whiskey and plowed, and he takes all the instruments of the oxen and he builds a bonfire.
And there he prepares me for the people of God. With those options. Now he can't go back.
He set his course down. He's on his way to follow Elijah.
Is that the case with you?
Or have you made provision for the flesh?
I believe that's what that means.
Oh, we need purpose of heart to follow Christ, How we need to cut off everything. It has been cut off at the cross, but we are not ready by faith to lay hold of it. We're seeing now as dead until Elisha going through Jordan with Elijah.
The scene of death and identifies himself.
In death and resurrection.
With the Lord Jesus Christ, it's a picture of what we have in the New Testament.
And we find that his wife, that he goes through four cities.
After Elijah's gone up, he retraces those cities, which gives us a little outline of the history of the Church here on earth and the ways of God with him.
We find, too, that on our last occasion we were together.
That we have a different picture.
We have a picture now not of the whole thing, but justice of the assembly on the earth in its testimony.
Not the individual blessing, but the corporate thing gathered together as a house character to represent Christ down here.
In separation from the world.
But tonight, that we have before us is the state of soul that goes along with such a core.
Because, you know, sometimes we think that if we subscribe our names or something, everything is all right. That's the principle of bitterness.
But if you and I are going to be maintained in the testimony of God on earth, and in the enjoyment of these things in our souls, there has to be a certain state of soul.
And so we have tonight, The Great Woman.
The great woman here gives us a picture then.
Of the individual believer who pursues right on to the end.
In the enjoyment of Christ and this object, it's really a little picture of the book of Philippians, normal Christianity. And so we read just a little bit in Philippians tonight.
We have also in Colossians the picture of setting our mind on things about since you are risen with Christ, letting your mind on things about well, that's the position then for the believer now.
Well, I believe what we have here is a picture of it.
Now in this portion that we read tonight, I believe we have at least seven tests.
And we can test ourselves as we go along by these tests.
The first one is that Elisha comes to Shun.
Now you and I recognize when the Spirit of God is bringing before us something particularly for our own heart and conscience.
Are we so busy in this life that we haven't time to listen to that still small voice when it comes?
Submit the first Test. Well, I would admit the second one we missed. The second we're allowed to miss the 3rd. And the first one is that Elisha comes to shooting. Now what is shooting? Well, it's the city of Israel, but it was the city of Ithaca, and it was that of Ithaca, you know, one of the children of Jacob.
That he saw that the rest was good and the land that it was pleasant.
It was a prophecy of it. He was looking on to the inheritance that he hadn't gotten yet.
Well, that's that's the thing you see in the day when the spirit of God.
Is in control of things down here in the assembly. It's a normal thing for you and me to be occupied with Christ and the inherited.
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That's what he would occupy us with.
He may have to occupy us for a moment with our ways to correct them as we get out of communion.
But he would occupy us with Christ and the Inertia.
That's the way we grow. That's the way we're happy. The new nature can't be happy.
Groveling in the earth.
And so then the first point here is that the prophet comes by and she recognizes him as the prophet of God.
Elijah represented to us now, Christ having gone on high, the Holy Spirit coming down, you see.
And working through servants down here in this world.
You'll notice in this chapter that.
Elijah does not speak directly to her.
He does on occasion, but in the main you'll notice that it says.
In the 13th version, he said unto him, Say now unto her to see it's indirect.
It's indirect.
If the Spirit of God now is speaking, but He's speaking through whomsoever he will.
So it's an indirect thing.
It's a little picture of the present day.
It's important to notice that.
And you'll notice too, at the beginning it says she's a great woman, and now we can see why she recognizes the present testimony and worth of the spirit of God.
And she constrains him to eat bread.
Now he would have gone on his way, just like the Lord of the as he met went with those two on their way to a man. When they got to their destination, he would have gone on.
Except the same constrained into abide with them.
And you and I, as we go through our Christian pathway down here, we can have just as much of Christ as we want there all the time. But if we're going to busy ourselves with everything that belongs to this scene, we'll find our souls lean. We won't be in the enjoyment of heavenly things. We won't have power in our lives for good.
Other objects will take our eyes and then our hearts and our feet will get out of the past. We've become sick in our souls and worthless to the testimony of Christ. But here is the way you see that the great woman walked through this world. Why does it say woman? Well, woman speaks the position in Scripture, whereas man speaks of responsibility.
Abraham was the one who carried out the purchases of God in his day, but his wife Sarah was out of the denture, that is, her place was at home. She maintained the position that Abraham set forth. And so it is with the assembly. And so it is with this woman here, giving us a little picture of the position that we should take now as individuals.
So she constrained a beef bread and noticed, though it was that as off as he passed by.
You see how it's increasing?
Just that little star and then it's off as you pass by.
Well, how many happy times there must have been in that little hole.
As often as he passed by, he turned into the sea breast.
But now she's going to do something else. She's going to make prevention, so you'll be there, have a place to come all the time.
You know, someone has asked the question How can I gain an appetite for the word of God?
The answer was read it, read it.
And the more you read it, the communion, the more you want to read it.
I believe that's what we have here.
And so she said to her husband the whole night perceived that this is an holy man of God.
You think you and I could go out in communion with him without the recognition of that?
The holy man of God. What does that suggest to our souls? It suggests that if we're going to be in these presence.
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That there will have to be holiness in our own walk.
We can't allow you in our lives and expect to go on in communion in the enjoyment of the things of Christ.
Until then, what's the guard?
Arrived at solemnly, Prophet of God.
The picture to us of Christ is the Spirit and ministers Christ to our souls. That's the remedy for a bad state of soul is Christ. There's no power within us to do good unless we have the right object.
And Edward, occupied with Christ, were told in Second Corinthians were changed. That's what changes us. It isn't efforts of the flesh. The flesh profits nothing. Having a holy object before us is a change into that same likeness.
In a practical way down here.
So it's a holy man of God that passes by us how often?
What?
Off continually.
Well, he probably was passing all the time, but she didn't notice it before.
He didn't notice it before. It's continuing now. All she says will have to make him a place to stay.
And so.
We don't get much response from the husband.
And so it is. A young man, a young woman will be converted, another home. They'll tell about it at home. But there's no injuries on the part of the rest of the family.
Or it might be a wife is inverted or a husband and they go home and they find that there's no interest in this on the other side and so they have to go on a loan as we have here.
And so she makes this little room.
Let us make a little chamber. I pray thee on the wall or with balls, And let us set for him there a bed, and a table, and a stool, and a Candlestick. And it shall be when he comes to us that he shall turn his feather. All the simplicity of faith that we have here when he comes your turn in.
Do we have that confidence? Beloved brethren, tonight, you know what makes confidence?
And in our souls, between our souls and Christ. Why that? That nearness that comes when we have crisis, the object and we're walking in separation from evil practically, that brings confidence.
We find on the 14th of John, that is, the promise is that the Father himself and the Son will come and make care of both, but it's in connection with the keeping of His commandments.
It's in connection with walking in the path of faith. Now that isn't the that isn't the commandment of Moses.
It isn't keeping the law to get anything. It's simply the heart and the enjoyment and what places in because you know there's someone you love. Their desire is a command to you, isn't it?
When we discovered.
So then we have a bed, a place we can rest now. Putting this practically tonight.
Does the Lord Jesus be able to rest in your home?
Or is there something that Mars?
For the Holy One.
Is the Spirit of God free in your home or mine?
Is there something there that would would hinder that joy from coming out?
We think sometimes, you know, have I an object, Lord below.
Do I have an object that would divide my heart with me? And how many times we discover that we have objects that would divide the heart from Christ?
No, she has a place where you can rest.
Good she did, you know, later. Because she needed this little room and she needed that bed and she needed it awfully bad later.
As though as I say again, unless we notice these steps, these steps, and and find ourselves following them, we're going to find bitterness in our lives.
Now what's next? A table Communion.
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Bad The prophet of God can rest. And now a table for communion.
Well, that's of course in our own The meditation can be developed, we find, in the New Testament.
That what's the Civil War? Well, someone has said that Mary considered his feet.
I suppose there were many, many unpleasant days that that woman spared the feet at least license.
And he ministered grace to her heart. And how many times, brethren, do we find ourselves at the feet of Jesus, enjoying the truth?
And now the result is a Candlestick. That's the light that that must be there. If the others are there, they can't help them anymore because, you know, testimony is the overflow of a heart taken up with Christ.
And one who goes out to to give out the gospel. Unless Christ is the object, it's worthless.
It's just it's just a flash, unless Christ is the object.
So we find the candle, six things of testimony.
And so she was confident that when he came along, he would stop there. And he did. He said he did.
It always answers faith. Faith is never disappointed.
But now we find the tables turning. You and I can't do a thing for Christ. But what? There will be a reward.
You dear young people, want blessing in your life. Well then put Christ first. Now be blessed. This can't help but be blessed, you read in the 21St Psalm. He has set him to be blessing.
And that's what Christ says.
You know, in the coming day, in the millennial scene, he's coming forth as king and as free as.
Kangaroo and is free to dispense royal grace and blessings to his people, and he will do it now for all those who make him the object of their heart.
You'll notice here that the woman is called a shunammite.
We were suggesting why that was her inheritance, but you know that the children of Israel were in a bad way and they were under idolatry.
And they were the target for their enemies at this time.
God has promised some blessings in their land, but they didn't. They couldn't enjoy their inheritance. And you know, right now you and I find ourselves, as it were, in between.
Soon the Lord will come. You take us home.
But now we have the privilege of thy faith enjoying and anticipation that inheritance looking forward to it. And that's what the Spirit of God would occupy us with His friends. Without vision, the people will perish. But now we have a blessed hope coming of the Lord to take us home, to be with himself. That's the blessed hope. And so she's called to shoot him right here.
But a little later, she's called the mother.
We noticed already that she's been called a woman, a great woman.
Now, is that just a way of making the subject a little more interesting by using a change of words? I don't think so. We learned that the word of God is pure. That means that every word has a distinct purpose.
And so when she's the shunamite.
He's commanding the faith that lays hold of the inheritance.
When she's the mother, it's the affections that are in you, and when she's the woman, it's just the face.
Of the person.
To maintain their position.
You'll notice that as we go along.
Now she's going to be tested again. This is the.
2nd test in the 13th verse.
Because gave the eye, he said, that called the Shulamite, and when he called her, she stood before him. He suddenly said now unto her, Behold, Alice, been careful for us with all his care, What is to be done for thee? What thou be spoken for to the king or the capital host?
She answered. I dwell among mine, old people.
What an answer. What an opportunity. Perhaps the king would have sat on a banquet for this woman if you lied to his death. So.
What honor, or perhaps the captain of the host would have arranged a parade in honor of this woman? We don't know what might have happened if Elijah had spoken the word.
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No, she said. I dwell among my old people.
Intensive.
Dear young people here, tonight, the world makes an awful appeal to our hearts.
But you know, just at the time when Moses was greater, he could head over, ready to take the throne of Egypt then he chose. It's when he became great that he chose. What did he choose? He chose to dwell among his old people.
If Moses had continued in the palace when he became of age and great, he would have been living a lie.
Because he was an Israelite, not in the kitchen.
And how many there are today who are living a lie in this world? They say they're a Christian and yet they live in this world.
Moses might have had his name inscribed on a special tool.
But Moses, as his name is, strides in heaven tonight.
Oh, what a difference. This world and our story is going to pass away. This was a great woman. She didn't even make the choice, and that's what makes her greater still. She left it to the prophet of God to make the choice for her, and he gave her the same blessing that God gave Abraham.
A child in view of the inherited.
Because everything depended on the woman seed, you know, Everything defended on that it was Christ and it was the inheritance that was in view.
And so we find her now, not choosing first out, but just leaving everything to him, all that simple trust and conquerment.
Our hearts are being tested. Are we going to choose our own pastor of this world? We'll be disappointed.
The one who created us now wants our hearts to respond in simple confidence. They, Lord, undertake for me just a path out for me that I'm to walk in.
How many have made their own choices? How many young people have chosen companions? And that's crystal and bitterness.
Prolonged bitterness. And so it is in business in many other ways, leaving Christ out. It won't do y'all this woman, she says. You just choose and I'll be satisfied. Is that the way it is with your heart? Are you willing to take what he provides day by day? He simple dependence you do, you'll be happy.
I'll just say some according to the time of life, I'll show embrace the sun.
Nay, my Lord, thou man of God.
He was a holy man before, now he's a man of God to her.
To see our faces increasing, her life is increasing. She's growing in her soul because she's observing these tests righteousness.
Do not lie to Thine Handmaid, but it all came about.
And now she's going to be tested again. All you're saying cast the poor woman be left alone a little while without being tested, tested all the time? You know, no, we're here just a few years to think of what's coming. Think of the glory that's ahead. You know, here we're being formed. Each stone is being shaped for his place up there. And there's a test, a continual test as long as we're in this world.
God has great things for his people and he isn't going to leave us with first principle.
You want to enlarge our hearts, and he would have begun a good work in you, Philippians says.
Shall complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.
No, you won't leave her alone.
And soul, just as she gets his son. Notice the language here.
18 person when the child was grown, that fell on his baby and went out to his father to the reapers, and he said to his father, in my head, my head, I suppose it was a sunstroke. And he said to a lab carry him to the Shunammite No, no, no, no.
00:40:01
It's the affections now. That's the way we grow.
He's going to touch the heartstrings.
Mr. Mother.
When you've taken him and brought him to his mother, who sat underneath his knees till noon and then died, noon, that's the middle of the day. That's when things are the brightest for nature.
Everything coming our way, a good job.
A nice family, everything we need. Everything is pleasant. And then the crash comes. Oh, you say, how terrible, how terrible, how blessed is, God said.
Why? Because now when she gets your son back to see, she's going to get him back in resurrection life.
She's going to have all her blessings now in connection with Christ up there in the glory, because everything down here pretty soon is going to burn. Are you setting your affections on it?
All that God would wrench our souls from us. The desire of these things down here we set our hearts on Christ and Christ alone, but not just Christ as he's known on earth as a man that he sees there in his glory in God's right hand. That's what the apostle wanted in the book of Philippians.
To press through the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. That was what was before the Apostle Paul.
Yes, everything here in all wonder in nature suddenly is crushed.
So that she can have better things.
The flesh doesn't like it.
But that's what brings light to the Spirit we're told in the book of Isaiah. Light to the Spirit, and you know we will have life in the Spirit for all eternity.
With Christ.
My dear friend, tonight, if you don't know Christ as your Savior, now is the time now to receive it. You can't boast of tomorrow.
You don't have Christ as your Savior. You'll never have any part and what we're Speaking of here tonight.
Now what does she do?
All she's Christ or is she?
Oh, how beautifully? This woman asked.
It's a great woman. Notice what she does.
She went up the first thing she went up.
He didn't go down.
Visiting a man not too long ago and he was down. He was right down at the bottom. This woman went up and there's been no trouble. She went up.
And laid him that child on the bed of the man of God. You see what I mean about observing each one of the tests?
If you haven't made that little room, she'd never had a bed to lay that child on.
There is a man of God.
Oh my dear fellow Christians, are you and I going on with Christ in our souls each day?
Where is your life going to end up down here? A ruin perhaps? Your your mind gone and everything else because of the the trouble that comes into your life and you will not walk in the path of faith.
How many times we've seen it over and over again where souls will go on heedlessly of the things of Christ as though it didn't make any difference at all that they walked down here?
Here we find this woman. She takes a step by step.
She's in the enjoyment of communion with the Prophet of God, who's the type to us of Christ, the ministers of his spirit to our souls.
So step by step, she lays away from blessing for her own life.
Is that what the apostle speaks of? And he says, working out your own salvation?
The enjoyment of it down here for our souls, for little by little.
But what else does she do?
She shut the door apart and she went out.
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To do that with your trouble.
God of Christ was the object you could have. Christ meant everything to you if Christ meant more than the child.
Well.
You know, Son in Scripture would suggest the thought of hope.
As well, to keep that in mind as we read this.
Now what's she going to do?
You go and get under the burden, no?
No, to her it's all well.
She called on her husband.
But.
It doesn't respond.
No, you won't respond. She's tested again.
She wants to run to the man of God and come again.
And that's what Abraham did, You know when he offered up ISIS, he said. I'm going up to sacrifice.
We are going up and we are going to come again.
That faith is that faith and resurrection life.
And the same thing here as we have with Abraham.
Now he suggests that there's no particular holiday holy day, we should say, in which you might go and observe that.
I suppose he was set before the traditional religion that would act before God on certain occasions because it was ordered so.
But this woman suggests to us a believer who's in the enjoyment of Christ in her soul.
And she's going to govern her needs not because of traditional religion. She's going to the man of God who lives on the hill.
It makes you think of Christ in the heavenly places is our great High Priest.
And he tells us to come for seasonable help just when we need it.
Is he there to wait on us? Think of the time when he was here in this world and the woman.
Of Maine was about to carry her son out and bury him.
Well, just as she goes out through the gate of the city, she turns in. Jesus is standing there.
All is it not always so?
When Peter's wife's mother was sick of a fever.
They just turned in. Jesus is standing there and they've been starting for her.
If we had time to go over the previous chapter and the third chapter of this book, we find 3 kings in the wilderness without water.
The harsh about among them one of the kings of Judah, and they turned in Elijah standing there. Elijah is standing there.
Ready to provide water for us and reverence all was sold. We can always count on our great High priest no matter what happens. He's always there. And even though the natural light doesn't see him, the Eye of Faith knows he's there at all times. And then he's there for that one purpose, to serve his people.
Down here, you know we're not blessed. Savior came into this world. He came to serve. He says I'm ammonia as well. I'm the service. When he went on high, he went upstairs to serve, let's have you. And he said that for those who wait for him in the 12Th chapter of Luke and watch for him. He said he's going to, when he comes back, he's going to gird himself the towel that serves them.
All is safe and now, he said.
Is the object of this woman and she goes she isn't going about anything hindered.
And she went and came to the man of God, to Mount Carmel. That's God's fruitful field.
It's a place that she had often been in spirit and it was an easy place for her to go to.
You know, perhaps then the Christians have gotten into the perhaps been walking carelessly most of their lives when they want this comfort they can't get us.
They haven't been making you a habit of it to be an expression, and they don't know much about Mount Carmel, God's fruitful field, and they're afraid to go Christian.
And you're trying to comfort them and you can't leave them there.
They just don't seem to understand.
Yeah, they prefer to be Christian, to see they haven't taken any steps one at a time.
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Until she goes to.
We find in the 25th verse the man of godstar far off, just like the father saw the prodigal afar off.
Same way God is watching for the good of his own.
The eye of God is following his people because of the shooting right now.
She's going to claim her inheritance.
At least that which would continue it see to us that she got an inheritance. She'd never get one without that son, you know.
She had no son. You know what that meant to a woman in Israel. She had no inheritance for to be carried on.
Going after that in there, are you? Are you going after the inheritance? Are you just interested in the present down here?
So he's tempted by Yeh Hazar, is it? Well? Oh yeah, she says everything's well. Could you say that?
She wasn't going to open her heart through anything.
Why? Because she has spiritual perceptions and she can detect.
The man who is not a man of God.
Hey die. In the next chapter Cell is full of leprosy and she was able to detect what she ended up.
She wouldn't open her heart to gaze, nor would she go with him. When the Prophet sent him to heal the child, he couldn't heal the child.
All discernment given with those who walk with Christ is the object the following steps 1 by 1.
And I'm the enjoyment of his mind at all times.
Here I'm going to thrust her away from the prostate when she's safety.
To see gays, I didn't have the mind of God.
Man, God, said Mary alone. Her soul is back to dinner. Gays, I didn't know that.
Now she said that I desire the Son of my Lord. The whole truth is out now.
Now she's let out the truth. She's unburdened her heart, and the moment he hears that, he knows what's the trouble is the Lord has hidden from me.
He says, OK, now you'll go down.
A gird up, dear Lord, to take my staff in your hand and go thy way to meet any man. Don't salute him. If any salute the answer not again. Lay my staff on the face of the child. It's a case of life and death.
But he's testing the woman in the 30th verse.
And the mother of the child said.
As the Lord liveth, and as thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee.
All to have that attachment to Christ, this person.
Marvelous to see it here. There's a soul that it might constant exercise is fortified for the day of trouble. For one who goes on carelessly finds themselves in a position like this without resource, because their own mind and heart is out of community. The resource is always there, but they're not in the enjoyment of it.
Well, the hayside's mission wrought no good at all.
No child was out of weight.
And so it is with the flash spirit of God gives us to see the end of it. Here there's no truth.
His eye was one who professed to be a servant of Elijah, but we learn his character later. He's all covered over with leopards that he was a covetous man. He was not acting in the presence of God. This woman was.
And when Elijah was come into the house, 30 second verse, behold, the child was dead and laid upon his bed. Now that truth has to be made clear.
We were noticing the other evening that Elijah himself had to go through Jordan, the river of death and identification with Elijah.
He had to go through that with him. It's a picture of his death with Christ. Not only Christ death for us, but our association with Christ and his death. But how about our blessings?
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Our blessings going to be on the other side of Jordan that we came from. No, they're all up there. And that's what our soul has to learn down here. Just like this poor woman. And she goes through these trials, we find that at the end it's all bright. It's just give her a little more for her soul. She goes up, up, up all the way through their soul experience. Now she sees all her blessings you see in resurrection.
Her life and resurrection, the new creation, That's where all her blessings are. How many of Christians have seen themselves clear and clean, every spot washed away, and they know that they're secure for all eternity. Still, they don't realize that their blessings are not downloaded.
We bless them from every spiritual blessing in the heavenly, but in Christ Jesus.
Let can Christ Jesus and with Christ Jesus.
There won't be any blessings separate for each of us. It's all in and with Christ, and it's up there where He is. And you know, eternal life is only known really in the place where he belongs.
And that's in the Father's house. We anticipated by faith now. And John says he writes these things that we may know that we have eternal life.
But rather than that day when we hear the shout.
To be in the Father's house, be surrounded by everything that's of God. There won't be one thing tomorrow, one thing to hinder that joy.
In that day, and all things will be of God himself, of that character, God himself and joy, and you'll have the same joy that God himself.
Joint it out. You and I will enjoy it if we're occupied with Christ.
You'll enjoy it now.
But I wonder if one or two more points in the close.
The child is dead.
The child is laid upon. It's bad.
All that comfort that woman brought to herself as she.
Absurd, these tests that should go through life.
But comfort now she finds.
The very place where the Prophet rested and her son is rested.
Isn't that beautiful?
Oh, I think that's precious.
But now notice in 34th verse.
And he went up.
Again, we went out.
That's what the Spirit of God would want us to do. He wants us to rise in our souls.
Has my path been back? Yeah. But let's start now. Right now, let's start going up. In Soul Experience, Christ is the object, and he went up and lay upon the child.
To read this before perfect identification. And you know, when we hear the shout, they were caught away.
We'll be just like it in every respect.
Just like Christ.
Won't that be blessed just like Christmas?
And when God looks at His children, you'll see the mall just white stripes if you read in the priesthood. But in the Old Testament, you'll see that that Aaron has coat.
And that is done by political dislikely.
We'll be just like Christ in that day, just like him, the.
The point of what we've had before us on previous evening.
Connection with Elijah's ministry that he wants us to be morally like him now and.
That's the purpose of these exercises.
That there might be continuous dropping off of those things that belong to a scene of death.
Brevan Aren't they the great flows? When the Lord Jesus raised Lazarus, he didn't take off the great flows.
No, he told those who stood vice as you do.
And so we mix in amongst our brethren. Don't stay away from your presence, you'll miss a lot. Please mix in and out among our brethren and little by little the grave clothes get rubbed off, don't they?
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All the great flows that attaches to a scene of death.
Especially in a religious way.
It has to be all taken off, you know.
And so perfect identification. Now this is the believers hope we're going to be just like Christ.
In the flesh of the child lacks the worm.
They returned and walked to and fro.
Walked in the house to and fro and went out. He went up.
And stretched himself and the child needs seven times the child opens his eyes.
Now.
We find that in the first of Genesis.
The Lord brings God man, and he became a living soul.
That we find here 7 times.
The Lord Jesus said I'm come to give life and to give it more advice is that?
Its eternal life. It's not life in the first man in nature. God says the end of all places come before.
Friend, if you don't have this life, you won't have any. You'll have eternal death. If you have a winter trust in Jesus, Savior, you'll have eternal death.
Think of his life.
And this kind of life, seven would speak to us of that life is in spirit.
Angel perfection. And just like that, eternal life in the flagrant zone in the Father's house.
That's the end of the bleeping. It's not an inheritance down here.
It's a woman of Instacare was looking forward to.
Being everything in ruins, then, Hebrews says they that pleased to say such things declare that they seek a country.
And so you and I are looking forward now not to an inheritance down here. This place is going to burn.
Too.
You and I have our portion with Christ and glory, but she's tempted once more. And so on the 36th verse he called the hazard and said call the Shunammite. So he called her when she was coming in on to him. He said, take up my son.
Then she went in and fell out his feet, brought herself to the ground and took up her stone and went out.
You see, the problem is more to her than it's done. And where there's faith, Christ is more to us than the inheritance.
There's no way to say it.
To the soul who's in community, as presence, as the person of Christ.
The one who made us, the one who wants to make us happy, is the only one that can fill these hearts with joy and happiness. He'll be the same thing for all eternity. Went up now.
So it's saying 284.
Now hidden source.
Carly Fowler.
Thou art the patient love divine our health, and refuse from our foes secure we are for we are thy and all through guilt and grief and shame were hidden Savior by thy name.
Are we?
Aligned.
And.
I believe, I'm saying we're in heaven and.
Run. Run. Run. Run.
I'm not.
Lecture 1 on Elisha
Address—C.E. Lunden
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He returned to the 19th chapter first king, the 19th verse go he that is the light the departed then, and found Elijah the son of Shaffer, who was plowing with 12 yoke of oxygen before him, and he was the 12Th.
And Elijah passed by him and cast his mantle upon him, And he left the option, and ran after he liked her, and said, Let me, I pray thee, kiss my father and my mother, then I will follow thee. He said unto him, Go back again, for what have I done to thee?
And he returned back from him, and took the yoke of Oxford, and flew them, and boiled their flesh with the instruments of the oxygen, and gave unto the people, and they did eat. Then he arose and went after Elijah, and ministered unto him. Possibly a year ago some of us were looking together over the life of.
Elijah and we noticed as we were.
Following along as the scripture LED us into the various activities of Elijah the prophet, that his ministry took on a certain character. I suppose that's all was true of every service, some particular character.
We noticed that in his life there were seven pictures of repentance.
We didn't go into all of them, but we did notice some of them.
And in reading them carefully, we discovered that as seven is the perfect number, we have here rather a complete picture of that subject.
Not now doctrinally, as we have in the New Testament.
Set out before the beautiful order of display in the activities of that process. The first person that was mentioned was the widow of Sarepta. She repented.
Because that prophet had been in her house for 3 1/2 years.
She says have you come to the flame lifestyle?
Our Carson was awakened because of the presence of that man of God in her home. Had he said anything to her about?
This though, and it shows us the power of a godly life.
I brought that woman to a sense her need before God.
But we also learned at the same time that the Spirit of God is bringing before us a lovely type, the Gentiles who today are gathering around a rejected Christ because Elijah is the type of Christ, the rejected Christ. Don't you will turn with me to Luke's gospel just for a moment. We'll notice what we did notice at that time in connection with.
What the New Testament says about these two ministries.
The ministry of Elijah and the ministry of Elijah, you know, our dear brother Eric, who is now going to be with the Lord some years ago, many years ago, brought before me a thought that I value very much, he said. Whenever you read the Old Testament, remember you have to read it in the light of the news.
Because we're told that all scripture is given to us by inspiration of God.
We're told also that the things that were written before I were written for our learning. And we're told that the scriptures that are given by inspiration of God are profitable for doctrines, but it doesn't say they're all doctrines.
Until we get the doctrine in the news. But the older profitable for doctors.
That is, here we have perhaps one or two verses in the new, we have a whole chapter explaining them in the old picture forms, and that's the prophet of the Old Testament. And so in the in the 4th chapter of Luke's gospel.
We have what the New Testament says about the ministry of Elijah and Elijah.
Now it's a remarkable thing that we have this in Luke's gospel because Luke gospel brings before us the subject of rejection.
It also brings before us.
The subject of the Son of Man, and so in the 24th verse of the 4th chapter of Luke.
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And he said, Verily I say unto you, no, prophet.
Is accepted. Now that should really read acceptable because it's the question of rejection here, and better translations would give us the word acceptable.
No problem is acceptable in his own country, but I tell you of the truth, many widows were in Israel in the days of Elias when the heaven was shut up three years and six months.
When great feminists wrote all the land.
But as none of them was Elias, then save unto sorrepto city of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow, and many lepers were in Israel in the time of Elijah as the prophet, none of them was cleansed saving name in the Syrian.
College passage of Scripture gives us the key to the ministry of Elijah and Elijah we find the Lord here in His rejection.
Because Luke gives us the rejection of the Son of Man, and so we have the subject of faith coming out.
In this book of rejection, we find that the Lord is setting before them now in this matter, the two ministries that he's about to bring to Mass. The first ministry takes the character set before us, and he likes his life. That isn't the subject of repentance.
It takes in the life of the Lord Jesus when he was here, before he went on high.
And if you are familiar to all of these histories of Elijah and Elijah, you'll find that when one ends and the other begins, Elijah is carried into heaven.
And Elijah continues down here in the desert. And so we find that the ministry of Elijah then.
Is that line of ministry every sentence which was the Lord's ministry when he was here on earth?
But then there's a new ministry that he has when he goes to heaven.
That's when he went on high. He gave gifts on the man. We see the Apostle Paul coming forth with a line of truth that was entirely new.
It has to do with grace, the gospel of the grace of God. It isn't exactly the Kingdom line of things, although that's involved.
But it's an entirely new thing, for God is coming out now, hidden before to manifest all that He is in Jesus Christ, because the apostle Paul was given to see Jesus, not now as a man on earth.
See Him in the glory.
Exalted Son of Man.
That's the character of the Ministry of Elijah.
Is that why the ministry that sets before us Grace?
That, my dear friends, tonight.
You'll never understand grace. I'll never understand grace till I first had the ministry of Elijah. If someone else has said you and I will never know God.
Who we noticed something this wretched All the pride that's found here.
All slowly on to a bit, but we were singing in that little hymn tonight.
I nothing.
That's where the gospel brings us in. It gives us to see what we are. And we find in all of these repentances of the minister of Elijah that Elijah himself has to repent.
And Elijah has to repent.
And so we find that there's that in the life of everyone of it.
To which we discover the recession is not an act merely when we receive Christ as our Savior, but repentance is the state of soul.
And unless you and I go along through life conscious of the fact of what we are by nature.
Conscious of the great that saves them. I'm not saying occupied with it, no, but I say conscious of it because it's our privilege. It's our happy privilege now to be occupied with Christ and the inheritance.
But you know, dear friends, unless you and I are conscious of what we are.
The enemy is going to get advantage over.
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And so we have here then before 1St the Ministry like him.
And then we have the ministry of Elijah we said before, which brings before the new thing, before the new thing Elijah speaks. The ministry of Elijah speaks to us is coming in contact with that man Naman, who also was a Gentile.
And upon his repentance.
And following the prophet of God and what the word of God had to say to him, his flesh comes again with a little child. He's a letter now that has to do with a new line of things. It has to do with an entirely new life, a divine life. It's a type of a kind of life that only comes to the sovereign grace of God.
Now, in considering these things.
We find that.
Just as we close the ministry of Elijah, as it were, and again the ministry of Elijah, we find that the subject of repentance is prominently brought before us, because the Spirit of God is bringing before us a candidate, shall we say, for the Kingdom of God.
Now let me use that expression, Kingdom of God. We speak here in a moral sense.
That is righteousness.
The joy of the Holy Ghost is what characterizes the Kingdom of God.
I believe that's the 15th of Roland, isn't it?
I'm not sure.
Righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.
Now in order for that to be brought about, we find the Spirit of God and just before us and things for our conscience.
And we have them in the 9th chapter of Luke's Gospel. Now I speak of that because it's the explanation.
Of a part of the passage that we read of Elijah tonight.
And I think we should read it first before we go into the ministry.
Of Elijah.
In the 9th chapter of Luke's gospel, dying of the 57th verse, we have a new line of things, and it's called In the Way.
And the kind of fast that as they went in the way. Now what is this way Speaking of? It's a new way. And if you'll turn back to the early part of the chapter, you'll find that the Lord Jesus asks the disciples what men say of him. Old one of the prophecies returned again, but he says, whom do you say that I am?
Oh, you're the Christ of God, Peter Wright. Yes, he was right.
But Peter hadn't understood what had happened. All the Lord says, don't tell any man this thing anymore.
This other man has been rejected, and so he tells his disciples in the 23rd verse.
If a man will come after me.
Let him deny himself and take up his cross daily Follow. Now. That's the first step of a candidate for the Kingdom of God. First step.
Christ has been rejected as the King.
And now he's Speaking of something else.
It's a place in heaven. There's no place for you on earth now. If you're going to follow Christ, you'll have to give up everything here. Oh, brethren, this is precious truth. With that we laid hold of.
You have to give up everything there. We're going to follow Christ except the man Forsake all. He cannot see my disciples.
Until we notice then, in reading this from the 57th verse. And it came to pass that as they went in the way this way a certain man said under him, the Lord, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goeth. Jesus suddened him. Boxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nest of the Son of man does not where to lay his head.
You still want to follow me? Oh, he doesn't say that.
But what an appeal to the heart. You still want to follow me? You know what it means to follow Christ.
Dear friends, tonight thousands have rallied under the banner of Christianity.
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What do they know following a rejected Christ? And if we were to ask tonight?
Do I know about it? What you will want? What was the answer?
Boxes that hold those clever creatures of nature, they can find a way through this world and arrest to the birds of the air. With the big choice of the wicked spirits that have control of things down here. They can make their way through here and one falling over injections, right? He has no place in this world and the closer we get to this world.
The closer we are to the Prince of it, and the further we are from Christ.
Now we have the Lord Jesus saying to another Follow me, the man in the first case suggested. But now the Lord Jesus is asking 1 to follow him.
He said, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my Father. Jesus telling him left the death, bury their death.
That goes out and reach the Kingdom of God. Now we see an urgency coming in. In this thing, the Lord is asking a man to follow him.
Oh, he said I have something to attend to 1St.
No.
If this man wants to come into the blessing and follow the Lord Jesus to blessings, you'll have to drop everything and come. Why was it that the servant said to it? Rebeccas, folks?
Relatives, friends. Well, they said, why don't you tell me 10 days? No, he says, we're going now, we're going now. If Rebecca had carried 10 days, she probably would never have come. Now when God speaks is the time to act. I remember when my own boy said to me, Lane delirious on his bed, he said, father.
If the Lord speaks, will he speak again?
If the Spirit of God speaks, will he speak again? You know, that boy didn't receive Christ for at least a year after that. But you know, God was speaking and there are times when he's speaking and the Lord is speaking to this man. I redact. Oh, what a solemn thing it is when God speaks. What does Peter do when he spoke? What did Levi do? He up in quality.
What a solemn thing it is to have to do with God.
So we have again another also said, Lord, I will follow thee, but let me first go and bid them farewell when you're at home at my house. Now this is the part that connects with Elijah's ministry and probably was taken from that.
Suddenly, and no man, having put his hand to the flower, looking back his fit for the Kingdom of God. You know, the Lord Jesus said to his disciples once. I'll read his stuff.
We should be very careful how we read the Word of God.
I know this scripture has often been used as someone who started out as it were in some mission field and he didn't continue and he came back and they say, well his man puts his hand to the plow and turn him back. He didn't fit for the Kingdom of God.
Then what does it say? It says one who puts his hand with the plow and turns back if he sits for the Kingdom of God. What it says. So it's a question of sickness here for the Kingdom of God. Or it may involve the servant in the other too. It's a question here of Christmas for the Kingdom of God. Jesus said unto him, No man having put his hands to the plow and looking back.
Is fit for the Kingdom of God. To know who's that in mind, let's turn to the facets we've read in First Kings, the 19th chapter.
In the 1930s we have in this passage, first of all, the end of the ministry of Elijah. The name of Elijah means Jehovah is God. The name of Elijah means Jehovah is salvation.
Down the far ones and realize.
Salvation is all you have to know who God is. He would come to God and believe that he is and that he's a rewarder of them, which diligently seek him, Hebrews says. And so there has to be first of all.
Sense of what we are and all are ruined.
Realize what God is.
And the Spirit of God produces that we have in the Gospel of Luke.
00:20:03
The fear of God sitting before us, that precious state is the Lord Jesus, but as a man and one who can open up not only by his ministry, but by His very act, the hidden springs of the human heart, but at the same time can bring down that measureless grace of God that meets every need.
Because the heart is opened up at the same time, the most gospel we see before us, as we meditate on us, the right path for a man, a divine path for a man through a world like this. At the same time, we see a blessed Savior.
Attracting the heart of a full rebel center, coming himself and drawing the heart, as it were, with the chords of a man. Love right home to the father's house. That's the 15th of the father's house.
But you know, my friend, at the same time the Lord Jesus does not forfeit one bit of that which belongs to the glorious God is righteousness and His Majesty all the Savior. What a man, the man of Christ Jesus. And now in this chapter, I believe the Spirit of God gives us a little outline, the beginnings of a soul with God.
You know there were many prophets in scripture, but I don't know of another one that was taken from the cloud.
Here's the man that's taken from the plow and we find that there were 12 yoke of oxen plowing and he was the 12.
What does that suggest to it? Can we see to your to oxen? A yoke of oxen was starting out, and as they start out with a plow, the second start out to take the next Pearl.
And then the next one until Elijah is the last.
12 yoke of oxen and we were the last. Don't you see? It's the end of a dispensation.
The beginning of a new era, a new day, is what we have in the epistle of John, he which was from the beginning.
Oh, it isn't the beginning back in eternity there it is in John one. But in the Epistle of John, it's the beginning down here, a new beginning for man.
When this world was ruined, not only this whole earth ruined, but man of moral ruined, and there was no hope.
Let's say you're the Son of God, the man thou that starts a new race. It's called the seed of Abraham in the epistle.
Of Romans in the second chapter, a new race, the seed of Abraham, the seed of faith, Those who would simply cast themselves in all their need on that precious Savior, takes them home with him to the Father's house. But now you see in this passage before us the beginning of a new era.
In Cassidy's manual father to test it, what does he do?
Let the ox move around after he like.
Let me, I pray thee, gets my father and my mother, and then I will follow me.
Isn't it so every time?
Didn't Abraham get as far as Karen and Mary stop?
Every time, all dear fellow Christians, you never take one step ahead.
Unless the grace of God gives you the doing, there's no room for pride here.
The one who has learned to know something in his own heart.
Or simply wait upon God independence and that's what brings him along the way.
Because it's God's own prerogative. It's His own choice that you and I are saved at all. We have to learn what dependence is in the 5th chapter.
Hebrew, we find out those two precious, precious truths. It was the character of Christianity. It was seen in the captain of our salvation.
Dependent and obedience. Dependence and obedience is what characterizes Christianity.
And find them both and look brought out vividly in the ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ, until we find now.
He's tempted and immediately turned back to get one more little bit of what he had before.
You know, the expression father and mother here isn't what we often would think. It is just your natural father and mother. That's not the thought at all.
It's the first principle. You learn it with Saul of Solomon. Turning back to first principle, we had it last night. I believe some of us, we were noticing this one who has tasted old wine, never desired new great sovereign date, and that alone.
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Has done anything for man. And that's what we need to learn. The total depravity of man. The total helplessness of man.
God coming in, in the love of his heart.
Taking witnesses bring us home and so he says go back again for what I might under the.
This is a process, beloved. He's drawing him with the course of a man. He's putting him three steps over the way in the scene. What effect it's going to have on him, we're going to do now go back again. What have I done to thee? And he goes back.
But notice what he does. Does he go back to his father and mother? No, he doesn't. The attractions of that man Elijah is so great. He has a new object before his soul. No, unless you and I get Christ before our souls is an object. You're one who go back.
And they go on, and all the religious professional elders for brought up as brethren, we make a lot as brethren in profession. But remember, unless Christ is the object of the soul, you'll not you'll not continue. So what does he do then? Return back from Him? And so it should read the oak of oxen, because you see it was this 12Th.
That he's plowing with it really should read that way. And better translation.
We took videos of Oxford and threw them and borrowed their flesh.
Now what has he done?
In this passage before us the beginning of a new era, and he cast his manual party.
The tested what does he do? The odds move around after your life and said let me I pray thee kiss my father and my mother and then I will follow me.
Isn't it so every time? Didn't Abraham get as far as Karen and Mary stop? Has he made any provision for the flesh? No.
Just cut right into it's the principle of circumcision. It's cutting off the flesh. It's a rolling away of the reproach of Egypt. Now he can't come back.
He slain the oxen with which he was plowing everything along. His former conversation is gone. He must go on. Oh, dear Christian, you and I done that, have you?
Are you making provision for the flesh? Oh, I say, these truths are vital, and they're so necessary today.
You either have to have Christ is everything. You're going back, going back.
And so it says he slew them. But what does he do?
Life turns everything now into a new path and boiled the oxen and provide meat for the people of God. So ministering grace.
Remember the oxen and all the instruments of the oxen in the fire, That's the judgment putting him in the place of judgment where they belong. Because, you know, we never reclaim anything from the flag. The flesh profits nothing. But notice what it says. And they did eat.
What does that mean?
What it means if you say this fast?
Your work will be profitable.
Your work will be profitable. There will be results from it. They did eat well. There's a great deal uncontained in these verses in connection with what we have in that turning point in Luke's Gospel, Chapter 9. That's what the Spirit of God brings before us there.
Because the 9th chapter of Luke is the turning point of that gospel, and from then on we have heavenly things. Before that it was the Kingdom.
Now we have heavenly things, and in the last 11Th chapter we find that in connection with the subject of prayer, he says, if your Father, if you pray, ask your Father for something, for basically to give you a stone and so on.
How much more so much your Father wishes in heaven.
Give good things the Holy Spirit to them, they're asking. So we have introduced the Holy Spirit, which is that person who comes into the believer and dwells there for all eternity. That's Christianity, because strange as it may seem.
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John does not bring us into heavenly things, he brings heaven down here.
But Luke, because of the path of rejection here, they still have anything until the 9th chapter we have.
The Father himself coming out and that's cloud of Shekinah glory enveloping those disciples as they stand on the Mount of Transfiguration. It's the only gospel with us. And so we see in that same chapter, because they they've been rejected and they're following a rejected Christ. He presents to them three heavenly glories. They will participate with him in our view, the earthly glory that's spoken urgently.
16th chapter of Matthew.
Is not there.
The heavenly glory that's prominent in the Gospel of Luther.
Well, I mentioned this because of the character of it and because of its connection with the type that we're looking at tonight.
And so we'll turn them to the second chapter, a second king. It would be nice to go through these other pictures of repentance, but I believe it would be more profitable for us now in connection with the subject we're pursuing to those some things in the second chapter of Second Kings because it continues the history of Elisha in this particular thing that we're noticing tonight.
The second chapter and second game and it came to pass when the Lord would take up Elijah.
By a whirlwind.
That Elijah went with Elijah from Gilgal, and Elijah said unto Elijah, Terry here I pray thee, for the Lord has sent me the Bethel.
You like to set unto him, as the Lord liveth in his thy soul liveth. I will not leave thee. So he went down to Bethel, and the sons of the prophets that were Bethel came forth to Elijah and said unto him, Knowest thou that the Lord will take away thy master from thy head today?
He said yeah, I know it holds in your face.
Elijah said unto him, Elijah Terry here I pray thee, for the Lord is certainly to Jericho. He said, As the Lord limit, and as thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee. So they came to Jericho, and the sons of the prophets that were Jericho came to Elijah and said of him, Know about the Lord will take away thy master from my head today. And he answered, yeah, I know it.
Holds you your peace. Would like to set a little Terry, I pray thee here the Lord has sent me to Jordan.
He said, As the Lord liveth unto his life, so liveth I will not leave thee. And they too went on. And 50 men of the sons of the prophets went and stood to view far off, and they too stood by Jordan.
And Elijah took his mammal and Raptor together and smelt the waters, and they were divided, hit her and thither, so that they too went over on dry ground.
And it came as fast when they were gone over.
That Elijah said unto Elijah, Ask what I shall do for thee before I be taken away from thee. And Elijah said, I pray thee, let a double portion of thy spirit be upon me. And he said, Alice asked a hard thing, Nevertheless, if thou see me when I'm taken from thee, it shall be so unto thee, but if not, it shall not be so.
And it came as fast as they still went on and talked.
Behold their appeared chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and part of them both asunder.
Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven and Elijah's God, and he cried, My father, my father, the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof. And he saw him no more.
He took all of his own clothes and wrapped them in two pieces, and he took a ball to the man of Elijah that fell from him, went back and stood by the Bank of Jordan, and he took the man of Elijah's cell from him and smelt the waters and said.
Where is the Lord God of Elijah?
Weather also had spit in the waters. They farted hidden Feathers and Elijah went over.
And understands the province which was to view as Jericho saw him. They said the spirit of Elijah just rest on Elijah. Now here we have a continuing picture of the activity of the Spirit of God into the soul who is brought into the Kingdom of God, righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.
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That more permanent thing which has a heavenly character, not just the Kingdom on earth, which will be true of Israel in the coming day, but that portion that belongs to all those now will put their trust in Jesus. It's a marvelous thing to think of the work that was done for him, but have you ever thought of the work that is being done in you? Who has begun a good thing to you will perform?
Until the day of Jesus Christ, and I believe we have that here. We see now that Elijah by bringing before the conscience of Elijah.
What he is in himself.
That he has to. He has to be done with everything. We find that now Elijah's eyes are fixed on Elijah. Are your eyes fixed on Christ or mine? I fixed on Christ.
Oh, the Spirit of God appeals to us as we read these scriptures.
Do you know that when we get home to heaven, there's going to be one object in heaven and there's going to be one thing that happens. The object will be Christ and the thing will be a suffering. Readers in the 9th chapter of Luke, can you please, until we see them, that Elisha as he died fixed on Elijah, He won't leave him. Go away may he won't leave him. And you know, that's the power of the Christian life.
If he lied to go to Bethel, he'll go there. He didn't say to go with him. He didn't say you come with me to Bethel. No, he didn't. Just drawing him in the chords a lot. They're the only permanent chords, you know, the only permanent one, because that's what will last for all eternity, course of life. At the same time there were courts of a man.
And we follow that message, Savior, to the Gospel of Luke. See the man Christ Jesus.
Poor heart, we've come to the end of themselves. We have no hope. This is come with me. I'll take you into the Father's. They were ready for it. They were ready for it. Still sitting down at the table with me and all their rags and their ruins. And yes, they were at home there. Oh, what a savior. What a savior.
And so now.
The heart of Elijah has been attracted to Elijah. He won't leave him. He won't be. But we have some others here. We have the sons of the prophet.
And there always have been the sons of the prophets. You know, there may be some here tonight who have taken the name of Christ on their list, but they know nothing of the experiences of Elijah. They don't say We will not leave thee. They stand far off, they observe.
They don't. All the outward follows of it and the doctrines of it. They say your master is going to be taken away from your head today.
They know all about it. They might be able to give you a clear description of the truth of Scripture. Then you know yourself.
But I say that the sons of the they don't cross Jordan with Elijah. They don't know anything what it means to be dead and risen with Christ. They know nothing of that. They may be able to talk about these things, but they'll stand as far off and do. And after it's all taken place on their question, that's the sons of the prophet. Only the Spirit of God awaken our hearts to realize what it is to follow or reject Christ.
And so let's notice them. We have first Gilgal. I don't think this is the Gilgal down by the Jordans. That had to do with the chairman of Israel when they came across into the land. I believe this is the Gilgal back in the flames. Another kills all which is recorded on the map.
Because they came down from yellow golf. You see, we have here a lovely picture of just what we have in the Tabernacle in the wilderness. God side comes first. Male black. The 1St place we start with is the very glory of God itself. Because friends, remember.
Counsels were long before man's responsibility. Man's responsibility only comes in and show us what we are so that God can come in now and claim that we're Chronicle. That's all God's counsel for long before. So we begin at Gilgal when we come down to Bethel. What's Bethel? You know very well.
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In the 28th chapter of Genesis, all the promises that were given.
To Jacob, he said I won't leave you until I've done all this and I'm going to bring you back to Bethel with blessing I will bless thee. Jacob put on the provision. Jacob said if you do this, then I'll do this. God never said a word about what he should do. He says with blessing, I'm going to bless you. That's Bethel.
All the blessings that have been proposed now to the work of Christ. And so then he goes on to Jericho. Let's Jericho first place the experiences coming with him, experiencing the glory of God. And our believer now is seated in the heavenly place to think of it. But then we have vessels and promises and now we've come down to Jericho. Where's Jericho?
The place of the curse. And we find ourselves first of all seated in heavenly places. Our hearts rejoice.
We find that matchless truth of God, the counsels of God. We have an Ephesians one and then we see in Bethel how he is is the House of God. You know, he's gathered all the children of God around Christ, the center. But then he wants us to know the character of the scene we're passing through.
Jericho, it's a place where God's cursive, and it's a place where you and I will find nothing that can satisfy our hearts. And he wants us to know it before he leaves. He wants Elijah to know all about this before he leaves this and he goes out to the glory. And so we have all the precious ministry that God has given us in regard to these things. Are we laying hold of it? Do we know what the character of the world is? Are we trying to prove it? You know, there's two ways to discover.
These veins, one is by faith and the other is by experience. But you know, experience lose of scars. Faith doesn't. Oh, how sad the scars. How better, much better if you and I just took the word golf realized just let the past that we're treading it through a wilderness Jericho place of the curtain. So he says keep your eyes right straight in front of you. Don't turn the right hand into the left.
Go right up, pay no attention to the scene. Keep your eyes on Christ. What happened to Peter as he walked on the water to go to Jesus? Turned his eyes to the side, beginning to think again. Christ, Lord saved me. Experience, I think experience. But then where does it go? That is the beautiful language we have here.
Six birds and Elijah, son of him, carry, I pray thee here, for the Lord has sent me to Jordan. You know, sometimes I think, and I've done it myself.
I tried sometimes to perhaps encourage someone to do something, try to, to set their path out for them. You know, it's not God, it's not a God. Here's the principle of it. The principle is example, the Lord has sent me to this place or that. Now if the Lord has sent me and I take that path.
Then I'm sure it'll be an example of someone else. And he said, as the Lord LED us, and as thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee. But notice what it says. And they too went on.
Something new has been happening.
Oh, wonderful. The heart is an object now, and it has something that interests it that didn't interest it before. Not now. Plowing in this earth as we designed to accept word, It goes on in communion. The two went together. None. The fifty sons of the prophets come in again. Spoil everything.
Only once a night. You're either falling like Elijah, or you're a human among the people of God, one of the two spoiling everything.
They stood the viewer far off. Fifty sons of the prophets stood the viewer far off. But these two stood. Where did they stand? By Jordan. Jordan, the river of death. Elijah took his mammal, wrapped it together and smoked the waters. And they were divided. Hitler saw that they too went over him to rise. Like Fella asked you, dear friend, tonight, were you one of these?
Were you? This is the book of Romans.
It's a democratic Do you know why the the apostle said to them in Romans, reckon yourselves to be a dead indeed.
Dead indeed, under sin and so on. Why does he say to recommend? Because the man still alive, he hasn't crossed Joy yet. The river or the Red Sea is a picture to us.
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Of the death of Christ.
And the river Jordan is a picture to us of our death with Christ. The Red Sea, the crossing of it, is a picture of the death of Christ. Four. And all the enemies are talking, they see them dead on the seashore, since the river Jordan crossing it.
The picture to us of our death and whiskey that were free, you see, free because death frees us. You can't put any flames of any guilt on a dead man. They're all gone.
So the soul is set completely free now, full liberty following Christ. And so we see the two of them now across Jordan. Oh, Christ is the one who went down to death for but you see, baptism is a picture of our going down with him in it.
Coming up again, always coming up again. Now we present to them something new came to pass when we were gone over.
How they got over that? Elijah said unto Elijah asked, what I shall do for thee? He doesn't say I'm going to do something for you. He says, you ask what I shall do for me. Why? Because he has the mind of the spirit now, before I be taken away from thee. And Elijah said, I pray thee, let a double portion of thy spirit be upon me. All he wants a double portion of the spirit of that man.
Is the object of his heart. It's a type of Christ.
And he said, Thou hast asked a hard thing. Why does he say that? Because, you know, as far as man is concerned, it's the hardest thing for one lay hold of a written glorified strike, because it has to be by way of rejection, hard thing.
The path of following a rejected Christ is a hard thing, and it's only the grace of God it can lead his soul in it. Now what does it involve? Notice if thou see me when I'm taken from me, it shall be sore to me, but if not, it shall not be so.
Now that's the ministry of the apostle Paul. The Apostle Paul was smitten to the ground and he saw the Lord Jesus, not as the disciples have seen him down here, but he still I'm up there to the glory, the risen glorified Christ.
That's Christianity. That's the new ministry of Elijah. This is what characterizes Elijah's ministry. Arisen, Laura by Christ. Now what can he like to do? Go on and dispense the grace that's been given got lost. Great. The law was given by Moses. Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.
Oh, and Savior. Well now one more thing, possibly before we close.
Anytime they still went on and talked a lovely picture, beautiful picture that will be continued when we got home to glory, you know, been interrupted. He's gone on high, He's coming back and then we'll go on and talk to love it all in a day that'll be. Does your heart yearn for it? Have you got your eyes fixed on Christ?
Is it the object of your heart? Is he the one that's controlled? You're passed out here and gives you the power each day?
That behold their fear to charity of fire and horses of fire, and part of them both asunder. And Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven. And Elijah saw it. He gries my father and the Father. That's Roman Bates, the spirit in the heart of a father. Christianity brings us the truth of the Father.
It was never known in the Old Testament.
That's Christian. It's not just God knowing God is God, but it's now knowing the Father. It's the base lisping out ABBA Father. That's Christian. And what has happened? Why is having believed you were sealed with that spirit, everyone who cries ABBA Father is sealed Spirit of God.
And he saw him no more. We won't speak of the Israel and the horsemen. That comes in later in life's ministry.
We saw him no more, and he took hold of his own clothes and read them in two pieces. Why is this assault? When they finally come to the place where they see themselves dead with Christ, their whole life changes. Why? Because they get a view of themselves but they've never seen before.
And Christ becomes the object, and all these tinsel, the word that so attract the natural heart, They dropped off like autumn leaves. Its own character passes away. It's Christ from now on.
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Is Christ replaced on earth because he's left here to be a witness in the testimony to the One who's gone on high? A new power possesses his soul, and here is a living witness for the risen, glorified Christ down here on earth.
Now we have a picture of the church.
And you'll notice too that the testimony rendered by Elijah here.
Is that those who saw it, these fifty sons of the prophets, they had to bear witness to the fact that the very same power within his master, within him. And we read the 1St or the 2nd chapter of Peter first Peter, right? We'll read it this way, that she should follow any of them, not follow his death.
Is the only way we can do it follow in his death? Because you're either living that old Adam life or you're living the new life in Christ Jesus. And if you're living the new life you'll fall in, is that. Oh, they won't measure. It's often like a little child who tries to follow his father's footsteps, and his footsteps is awfully small, but still he jumps into his father's step.
In the same steps now he's ready for the mantle. Takes up the mantle. What does he do with it? Same thing is master here it's the same power now he has power to walk through this world the power of a new life. He goes back across Jordan now look for bear with us. And so where does he go He goes back into these four places that he is in with his master but he goes back in reverse order starts at Jordan and he goes.
Jericho and he goes to Bethel and then he goes to Gilgal and then he's home, the father's house. That's the history of the church. It's his progress down here and we may have time. The Lord allows us to speak of those things. On another occasion he took up also the mantle of Elijah that fell from him and went back and stood to the Bank of Jordan, seeing his death, and took the mall of Elizabeth fell from him and spilt the waters and said.
Where is the Lord's God of Elijah?
When he also spent the waters, they farted his and the Elijah went over, and when the sons of the prophets which were to be with Jericho saw him, they said, The spirit of Elijah does rest on in my ship.
Lecture 2 on Elisha
Address—C.E. Lunden
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Second king in the second chapter, again, there are different portions here and we'll just consider first down to the 22nd verse. That's we'll have time to consider the rest later. You were noticing the other evening. It might help us to connect it again, but there are four distinct places that Elijah goes with Elijah too. They started Guild off.
Gilgal, you know, was up on the top of the mountains and the plains. It makes us think of the heavenly places. And from there he goes down, because God always starts from Himself, you know.
All of start from insell and get out of backup. It means the House of God where all the promises were made. Remember the 28th of Genesis to Jacob. He lay with a stone for a pillow. The law. You know we arrested. They have Jericho, the city of the Kurds. Jericho's the place.
Where there's nothing to sustain a child's thought, down here it's this world, it's character.
But then it goes on to Jordan and he crosses over Jordan with Elijah.
It's our death with Christ. But after Elijah goes on high, we find that Elijah now reverses the order and he starts back. Because it's experience. If it's go outside of things in his purpose, it starts up there.
It's our experience, it starts down here in Jordan, and so we'll start reading them on the 12Th verse.
The second chapter of Second Kings and the 12 birds. And Elijah saw it, that is, he saw him going to heaven in the whirlwind.
They cried, my father, my father, the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof. And he saw him no more. And he took all of his own clothes and rest them in two pieces. He took applause to the mantle of Elijah's itself from him, and went back and stood by the Bank of Jordan. And he took the mantle of Elijah that fell from him and smoked the water. He said, Where is the Lord's God of Elijah?
When he often spit in the water, they farted together and thither he liked it went over.
And when the sons of the prophets which were to view at Jericho saw him, they said.
Fair to Elijah does rest on Elijah. They came to medium and thousand cells to the ground before him. They sat on him. Behold, now that be with thy servants 50 strong men, let them go, we pray thee, and seek thy master. Let's for adventure. The spirit of the Lord has taken him up and cast him upon some mountain or into some valley, and he says you shall not stand.
And when he heard him, till he was ashamed that sin, they sent therefore 50 men, and they saw three days that found him not.
When they came again to him before he carried it. Here we go. He said unto them, Did I not say, Unless you go not? The men of the city said, under Elisha the only. I pray thee the situation of this city is pleasant, as my Lord seeth, but the water is not, and the ground is barren or causes to miscarry. And he said, Bring me a new cruise, and put salt there in, and they brought it to him.
And he went forth under the spring of the waters, and cast the.
Solve in there that that's that the Lord I have healed these waters. There shall not be from them anymore death or barren land.
So the waters were healed until this day, according to the saying of Elijah, which he spaced. We have here then Elijah request of Elijah what he would do for him. He said I would like a double portion of your spirit. And so he said, well if you see me when I go up, it will be granted you. Now Israel has a portion of the spirit in that.
They're born of God. They will be, and the nations too that are safe. But it's never said of Israel or the nations that they have the Holy Spirit dwelling within them. They can never say I'm a father.
No, it is true that God will be known in that coming eternity as Father to all his preachers, but in a very sense the church can address in our flock, but to the nation he will say in the millennial day.
Because there being all nations in the eternal States, you know, come, you blessed of my Father, you see.
They'll marry him as being associated with the king, and they all know the King's flock.
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So God, because of the work of Christ and redemption, will be known in that day not only as creator God, but he'll be known in that place of dearness to his creature relationship. That's the result of the word of Christ. Oh, how much richer shall we say reverently God is because of the word of Christ?
He's going to have children that he can put his arms around. You don't believe it? Look at the 15th of Luke.
Children was present. His son is going to have a bride all the nations.
The millennial day will know him in a new relationship that is the.
Their faith in Israel, what a place they'll have, but they'll never, Israel, never be able to say, have a father.
There's that that you as one of the children of God today can enter into what we have in this passage of Israel as a nation will not know. And so we have been the double portion of the Spirit in which we have.
Father, now we notice that this comes having believed. You were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise in Ephesians life. It's come through believing.
You know, it doesn't necessarily mean when a man is converted that he's safe. We use the expression lightly. Conversion means change of mind. You may not yet have come to the place where he realizes what he's doing. And so we see in that picture that we'll try to rehearse briefly that we had the other evening what was mentioned in Luke 9, the man putting his hand to the plow and turning back.
Because I believe it's most important. Well, brethren, as we speak of these things, may I say they're most solemn. Why? Because souls all around us are taking up like things with the profession of Christianity. The church steeples are rising, but where's the heart for Christ?
And you know, brethren, we too are liable to be taken up with something false. We don't have that what I think before us. That's Christ.
Read the 27th Psalm and read it over and over again. We have an object for the heart. One thing that I desire, one thing.
You know nothing can satisfy the hearts of our this heart of ours, but we were so creative, nothing else will do. And if you have a doctrine before you, whatever that doctrine may be, my friend, is not enough.
Now we find that Elijah is coming along and he sees Elijah and he's plowing the 12 yoke of oxen and he was a 12.
It's the end of a dispensation. Well, he's 12 inch to the cloud with the 12 Oxford, the last yoga.
And so he cast all the sides and followed Elijah. My, how noble that is.
How wonderful. I've been waiting tests and see how wonderful it is.
He runs. That's not an indication of faith at all.
No, no, that's the flash. And so he says to Elijah. I want to go back and kiss my father and my mother.
Elijah says go back again. What have I done to be You don't know. You're not sent to the Kingdom of God. Any man puts his hand to the plow. That's repentance. Oh, how many have repented outwardly?
They've never gotten down to the roof. Peter didn't get to the root when he denied that he ever knew the Lord Jesus. And then when the Lord looked at him, he went out and wept bitterly. He didn't get to the roof. He didn't get to the roof till the 21St of John. The Lord says to Peter, Peter, if you love me more than the rest of these, I know he got down to the roof, you see?
That was Peter's trouble. Pride. Peter was very sorry for his sin, but he hadn't kept Judge. Pride, it's one thing to be sorry for your sin.
Another thing to get down to the route, because when you get down to the route, there's no more feeders and everything is right. And you know, we've said it before, but remember.
We can't salvage anything from the flesh. It all has to go.
It has to be Christ. And so he says go back again. What have I done to leave? And he goes back. What does he do? He takes, He plays the obstacle which he plows. You can't go back now.
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About everything.
Who, you say? Isn't that when he goes through Jordan with him? Oh yes it is, but he practically has done it already.
This is different from my profession of a thing or what I do in my heart, and that's what we speak you have in the ministry of your life. I'll tell you why. It's in the book of the King.
And the Book of the Kings takes up the subject of responsibility.
It's a necessity. So it's the Kingdom character of things. It's responsibility. You know, it's a wonderful thing to say. Yes, I'm a part of the body of Christ. It's quite another thing to walk in the power of that truth. And that's what it likes His ministry sets before us.
And Elijah Brevin, isn't that what we need today?
To know more of what it is to walk in the power of the truth.
Is it in the flesh where to do it? No, indeed. And so we find them that.
Elijah slay the oxen, Then he takes all the instruments.
While the harness, the yoke, everything goes into the fire.
Nothing dressy, but now we have the new object before him. He takes the oxen and he boils the oxygen and provides meat to the people of thought. So we see the character of industry. Great. Now we find he goes and follows Elijah. Now the heart is set. He's he's, he's cut off everything in the past.
It's the cross of Christ, the circumcision. Everything is cut off now.
As you and I made such a plea to break as you lighted it, well your enjoyment of Christ will be just in that letter. Now here we have a life of dedicated to following Christ, but still he like it hasn't gone up.
And he's going to test it the same time he's going to bring before him the whole pathway that he's going to walk in.
And so as he brings it before him, you'll notice carefully that although it may seem the other way, Elijah goes with Elijah. Notice carefully that's what it says. Elijah goes with Elijah because it's Elijah experience, you see, as it were. It's that experience of first being seated in the heavenly places.
Now what we have here in order is true Christian doctrine. That's the first thing. That's not the last truth.
It's the first one because unless you and I know our true position can never walk according to it, can we? If no one seated in the heavenly. That's the truth of Ephesians, and then we find all the full measures. We were singing that little him tonight. What race was done for us? The work of Christ? What is brought in brought us into because you know, if we didn't know that we would try to do something ourselves, wouldn't we?
When we find that the work of Christ has done everything for us.
Everything.
God has never asked us to do one thing.
The work of Christ has done it all.
We can't add to it without spoiling it. So then he goes out of the showing. Jericho, the city of the church, the place where everything is ruined. There's nothing for the new man.
Jerry. And then he leads him down to Jordan. And two of them went together. Oh, beautiful. You see, they've been drawn closer and closer, and now they can't be separated. And what is it that ties it up? And I go through the river Charley.
He devounced everything here. Strides is his object and he sees him when he goes up. He says it's a hard thing, but if you see me when I go up, your request will be granted. So he goes up as we rest tonight. He likes to sees it.
And so as he goes back across Jordan to retrace this path which gives us the pictures of the Church's history here on earth.
We finally have the same power as His master, and we find although the sons of the prophets know all about these things, and they can tell him exactly all that was going to take place, yet they in their hearts do not believe it, because they want to go and search and see. Possibly the Spirit of God is cast Elijah in some valley, all the rested hearts of the religious land.
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Appropriate doctrine outwardly, but knowing nothing of Christ, never having gone through Jordan.
Only man take it on the profession. They may have sat at the feet of Elijah, and I'm sure they did, although Scripture doesn't say so. But the evidence is proved that they knew all these truths, that he liked it in the sons of the prophets. We see them all around us, perhaps brought up in Christian homes. They know they offered truth, but they know nothing of Christ is enough until we see them.
As he crosses Jordan and there's a positive witness power of his master is a funny he has the same power.
Oh, it may not be in the measure of his master is true.
But the Lord Jesus could say is he left the scene, greater works than these shall be, because I go to my Father. The Spirit of God is down in the scene now. And even though man may not see it, there are works being done by the Spirit of God which He's using for creatures like man, which will be manifested at the resurrection of the justice. And so, brother, let's go on.
Not really in well doing.
And as much as you know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord shall all be manifested nothing. Well, he comes to Jericho, Terry there Now the difficulty is Jericho is as we find himself in Jericho. This is the difficulty. What we have is is likened to this. That is as we're there. The city is plastic.
What we have is pleasant, but the question is the power now.
Connection with the evil that causes the difficulty. The waters of the place, the source of all refreshments, are contaminated. And so we were noticing in Luke's gospel the other day as we were reading it together, that.
The Lord Jesus when he came Luke let his Spirit shows us how the Lord Jesus opens all the hidden springs of man cars.
Wickedness is there.
There's no gospel like loose to give us all the openings. It opens heaven for us and in the 16th chapter it opens hell, but it also opens his heart, he said within himself and said in the 12Th chapter, the rich man said.
So not much could have played it for many years. Take nine days, eat, drink and be merry, God said. Now this was not a congressman.
This was what he was said in his spirit. You'll find it scattered all into Luke's gospel.
7th chapter, the 18th chapter, the 12Th chapter, and so on. That's what man's heart says, and it's opened in the heart. And wine are just insane under the same circumstances. And so we see the hidden springs opened up, and we find as we go through Jericho that although we have all these promises of Bethel all over, seated in the heavenly places in the situation indeed is pleasant.
Dear President, we find that wretched heart.
With all its spring now opened up. Why? Because when?
The one who's going on in his sins, not conscious of what God is, the unbeliever. He hasn't had the springs opened up, obviously, because you never can get in the presence of God.
Without your conscience being active as possible because of what God is. But there was you and I have been called to the fellowship of Jesus Christ.
Because the Father, who is the Son, you know, it becomes his presence. Oh, did we say this was a solemn subject? Indeed it is. Because unless this is maintained, you and I will have no fellowship with the Father of his Son Jesus Christ down here and this Jericho through which we're passing.
Will be a dry scene indeed for us, Holiness becomes a thine house. Oh, God. And unless you and I know something of that and our experience down here, we won't enjoy our Christianity as we go through this world. We might be saying, I'm not Speaking of that. We're thinking about Jericho and the water spoiling the place. But now there are new springs. You know, there are new springs.
And so in order to see.
The connection with the New Testament. Shall we turn to mark 9:00 tonight?
9 Mark nine, Yes, Mark Luke nine last time the 49th 1St. I'd like to read more but we haven't signed to take up what precedes, which applies more to the unbelievers, but down to 49 spurs. For everyone shall be solid with fire, and every sacrifice shall be salted with salt. Salt is good.
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But if the salt has lost his saltless wherewith.
When you season it, I'm solving yourselves and have peace one with another. Now there's applies primarily to the one who is made the perfection of Christ in previous versions. Tell us what happens to those who refuse to cut off that refugee that is, they refuse repentance.
But here we find that everyone shall be salted with fire. Now we know the illustrations that are used in connection with Israel, how they're going to be brought and through the refiners fire, that is, they'll be tested as to what God's character is because of the people of God. And they'll feel it in the coming days. They'll go through the very fire. But you know.
Fire is that which consumes the draw for the believers. It takes away everything that that interferes with the silver manifesting the face. Otherwise it's smelling it.
He had to see his face in it, but then it all the dross has to go. But with the unbeliever when the fireplace falls, he consumed it was in a punishable fire due to breakage in the microphone wire. We are unable to record the balance of this meeting.
Lecture 3 on Elisha
Address—C.E. Lunden
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Second thing is the 4th chapter on the 1St 7 verses. Now there cried a certain woman of the wives of the sons of the prophets unto Elijah, saying, Thy servant, my husband is dead. And now know us that thy servant that fear the Lord, and the creditors, come to take on him my two sons to be bondsman. And Elijah said unto her, What shall I do for thee? Tell me, what hast thou in the house? She said, Thine handmaid, hath not anything in the house save a pot of oil?
Then he said, Go borrow the vessels abroad of all thy neighbors. Even empty vessels borrow not a few.
And when I come in, I shall shut the door upon me and upon thy sons, and shall pour out into all those vessels, and thou shalt set aside that which is full. So she went from him, and shut the door upon her, and upon her son, who brought the vessels to her.
And she brought out.
And it came to pass, when the vessels were full, that she said unto her son.
Bring me out of vessel. And he said unto her, There is not a vessel more, and the oil state. Then she came and told the man of God. And he said, Go sell the oil, and say, thy death live out, and thy children of the rest. I'd like to turn to First Timothy, the third chapter, and we'll speak a little of First Timothy first.
First Timothy 3 and the 14th 1St. These things write I unto thee.
To come unto thee shortly. But if I carry long, thou mayest know how thou Artest to behave thyself in the House of God, which is the Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.
And without controversy. Great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the spirit seed of angels preached under the Gentiles, leave down in the world.
Received up into glory. Now the Spirit speaketh expressly that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils, speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their conscience seared with a hot iron, forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from me, which God has created to be received with Thanksgiving.
Of them which believe and know the truth.
For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused if it be received with Thanksgiving.
For it is sanctified by the word of God, and prayer is output the bread. And in remembrance of these things, thou shalt be a good minister of Jesus Christ.
Mary, step in the words of faith and of good doctrine, for unto thou hast the same.
The 16th verse Take thee unto thyself, and unto the doctrine. Continue in them, for in doing this thou shalt both say thyself.
And then here they I suppose some would wonder why we would connect the passage way over in the Old Testament and 2nd Kings.
With such a package as this in Timothy, I suppose, though, that those who have been at these meetings can already recognize that they didn't before, that there is a similarity between the two lives, because in the Book of the Kings we have that which has to do with responsibility.
And so we have in Timothy. The book of Timothy, you know, was not written to the church. It was written to an individual.
But the instruction was that thou mayest know how they ought to behave thyself in the Church of God.
And so we have responsibility now. That is the responsibility, you know, of the old nature. I can't please God.
Because that old nature is to be reckoned. It's gone entirely with new creatures in Christ Jesus.
And the flavor now has new desires, new purpose, everything.
All things have become new.
And so now the responsibility that we speak of is that which.
Having the ability and the power, the spirit dwelling in it, all we need now is the direction, which way to go.
The flesh profits nothing. The God by his Spirit has given us power.
Walk in a world like this to the glory of God.
In taking up the ministry of Elijah.
And Elijah, which was first?
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We were saying that we have the key to that ministry and the.
4th chapter of Luke, where the Lord Himself upon his rejection, he tells them.
Of two characters of ministry.
Now he doesn't just come out and say, well now there's going to be a change and there's going to be two kinds of ministry.
God doesn't do that way. He puts things in a form like in pictures or parables so that.
Our spiritual mind is the only one that can deserve one who's born again. But besides that, once you have it, you can't forget it because you have an association with something else there. And so he brings before us the ministry of Elijah and the ministry of Elijah. Now, how do these, how do these ministries?
You have spoken out here to teach us anything for our souls, for the breath.
Well, simply that the ministry of Elijah was that which had to do with the Lord's ministry on earth before he went up, and it had to do with the preparation of the heart and conscience. It's the ministry of repentance. And we noticed that there were seven pictures of repentance in the ministry of Elijah. And so in that ministry we have the vessel. Man is seen as a vessel.
We read in our chapter tonight in Elijah.
He seen as a metal which has to be empty.
It has to be cleansed and it has to be fitted.
You know, we think of the work of Christ in the way that.
He came down to die for us, to put all our sins away and give us a new life. Which is correct. Marvelous truth. Think of it four sentences. We work, but how seldom we think of that side of things in which now there's a work going on in our souls.
Bringing us up to us in appreciation.
So that we'll be able to enter into and appreciate the things of God.
And so there has to be first the cleansing of the vessel.
And then there has to be empty and cleansing. Then there has to be the fitting of it.
For what's coming.
What's coming there? Why it's going to be filled with the oil.
That's what we have on our chapter tonight.
In the file.
Now we don't have to read very far in the Bible to discover what the oil is.
It's the Spirit of God, of course, but in a particular sense.
We have the oil mentioned with the virgins, you know.
In the Gospel of Matthew.
Some add oil in their vessels with their land, some add just their lands with no oil.
Well, what is the oil, man? Well, the oil is the present ministry of the Spirit of God and our soul. That's the oil. It's the whole present day that's characterized by the Spirit of God. The Lord can say when He went away. It's expedient for you that I go away, or when I go away, the comforter will come.
And in the 16th chapter of John, we learned that he will lead you into all these truths that should read.
Who is he speaking to? His disciples that were following him?
Now in the 14th chapter of John.
Remember, John's ministry in the Gospel is individual. It's not the corporate thing like the church, but it's the individual Christian. It's bringing us up to that individually.
And so on the 14th chapter, we learned that when?
The Lord goes away. We find the Father is going to send the Spirit in the 15th chapter. When the Lord goes on high, He's going to send the Spirit, and in the 16th chapter the Spirit comes of His own. What does that teach us? That all the persons of the Godhead are interested in this thing. Each one or one mind, that is it. So what?
What is it that's in view? Is it to have a people individually in the enjoyment of their blessings? Yes, indeed, there's that. But you get the whole thing in Ephesians 1.
And some of you here are reading Galatians. If you continue, maybe in Ephesians, if you want to notice this, when you read Ephesians in the very first chapter where you usually get the key, you'll find these three things.
1St is adoption.
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Now that brings in the thought of children. We have sons there too, but it's adoption now. That's individual blessing and blessedness individually.
But you get something else you get after you believed you were sealed. Now that's corporate letting you get the three things in in the first chapter you get.
I should have said the enact. If you get the adoption first and you get the inheritance in whom you have received the inheritance and then you get after you believe you receive, those are the three things to get that first practice. The individual blessing comes first, the corporate blessing comes second, and the house carriage here comes last.
Now what is the house character? It's the Spirit of God indwelling the believer. Now as we find under the day of Pentecost, the bloomer is indwelt by the Holy Spirit.
Something else takes place.
There's a company formed and it's called the House of God.
The alternate for a moment to the second chapter of Ephesians.
Just a verse.
Which may help us believe this is a very important subject or delay hold of, especially in days like this.
In the second chapter of Ephesians the 19 first. Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the Saints and of the household of God, and you are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone.
In all the buildings that we framed together grows into a holy temple in the Lord. That's the ultimate thing. It's growing now. It isn't complete yet until the church is caught whole.
There's not a vessel more we read tonight. That's it. Not about the Lord. And then the whole church is caught home to glory. But now known as the 22nd verse.
When whom ye also are builded together.
That's right, now.
Or a habitation of God?
Through the Spirit that's the present, we are billed as a guest.
One more for habitation of God now we have the Spirit will that connect with our subject tonight then habitation of God right here in this world now.
Who knows a few things in Timothy before we go to the ministry of Elijah again.
We were saying the other evening that there is no use of reading the Old Testament and trying to understand it except in the light of the new.
Because the prophets who wrote it perhaps didn't understand it themselves. They searched their own scriptures.
See what they meant, the ones that God had used to write them. But you see, now the Spirit of God has come.
And in that verse in the 16th of John, he's going to open to us all the truth that is, if we want to want to have it open to it.
Depends on how much we want, but I mean he's there to open it all if we want.
All the truth.
But then there is something else, and there is a place where he pleased to open it. Nowhere else. He sure of that.
There's a place where he's pleased to open it to us. Now both the passages we read tonight give us this picture.
As to how it does, what is the exact doctrine in Timothy and the other is a picture in the Old Testament.
And we'll notice the doctrine first, and then I think we can understand the thing better.
In this third chapter of First Timothy, the apostle says these things right eye under thee, hoping to come under thee shortly. But if I carry law now, when he says if I carry law, he's Speaking of that 2000 years in which the church has been here on earth, because the apostle Paul is standing before us.
Not himself.
But his ministry, his ministry, and so the church has been on earth now almost 2000 years. But now since he's he's going to carry long, there's certain things that are necessary as to how we should behave ourselves.
In the House of God.
And so it says here.
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The House of God, which is the Church of the Living God. The filler and ground of the truth.
Well, this is rather remarkable, isn't it? What is the House of God?
Well, this scripture says it's the Church of God. What else is it?
The pillar and ground of the truth.
Is he Speaking of something that's going to take place in the distant future when we're caught home into heaven? I think not. He's Speaking of that which is taking place right now and that which God is a habitation, His habitation on the earth. Why?
Well, turn to the second of Ephesians, the third of Ephesians. We'll see. Why the 10th verse?
We read the ninth verse and to make all men see what is the administration of the ministry.
Which from the beginning of the world has been hidden God, who created all things by Jesus Christ, to the intent that now, under the principalities and powers in heavenly places, might be known by the Church, the manifold wisdom of God.
Well, that's now then, not only to the men everywhere, but to the principalities and the powers in the heavenly. And I believe it's Peter that tells us which things the angels desire to look into.
And have you studied the Tabernacle of all you would see on the mercy seat to Cherubim, with their faces inward and downward as they spread their wings over that mercy seat? What are they looking at?
Are they looking at that precious blood that's on emergency? Which things the angels desire to look into? What is it? What's the marvelous wisdom of God? What is that? It takes 4 wretched sinners that are on their way to hell?
And to form them into one body, first to be the testimony of God on the earth, and then to be with Christ forever, is His companion for all.
That marvelous. Well then, back to Timothy.
But if I very long that thou mayest know how thou orders to behave thyself in the House of God, we stand the line of truth that we have in the kings his responsibilities.
So it isn't Timothy. Do you think God wrote this just so we could take and read it lightly? No, my friend, this is going to be a record at the judgment seat of Christ as to your behavior in life, how we treated the Scripture like this. You say there's disorder in Christendom. Why?
Because the scripture has been violated.
Men have no regard for that which God set up. He sets up his own thing. He has no regard for the Spirit of God. He sets himself up to take the place of the Spirit of God.
God gives us order, his own order.
The Church of God.
Church of the Living God. Congress Idol.
Contrast everything that man is set up. It's the living God. God, men and their death works, but it's the living God. And now this Church of the living God is found to be the pillar and the ground of the truth.
Now is this.
Church of the Living God composed of those who are on the earth here and then some of died and gone to heaven. He doesn't speak of it that way here.
It speaks of an actual thing on the earth that represents God down here in this world.
And it represents, it represents God as the pillar and the ground of the truth.
If that be the case, well then unless the place represents God in truth.
It can't be the Church of God.
Or capture the house in that sense, because what characterized the House of God and the Church of God is that it's a pillar and ground of the truth.
Now these things are solemn.
Because if God in olden days set up Jerusalem as a center where the truth was given out.
Well, then all the nations of the earth who wanted the truth would have to come Jerusalem to get now. This is God's doing, you know.
It's remarkable we don't have much here about.
The.
Things that we have in Ephesians, one that we were Speaking of, that is the side of truth were were accepted in the Beloved and that line of things. We don't have that here because what he's bringing before us here is that side of responsibility, you see, not the other side. The other side is true, but that isn't the subject here.
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It's a question of how you and I are going to behave in the face of all the truth that God has given us in this day. Are we going to recognize the true center that God himself has set up?
Where the truth is known, and only where the truth is known in its entirety, now we have in connection with that the truth itself.
Without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness. It's a mystery to everyone except those who've been brought into the Buddha. God was manifest in the flesh.
That was in the first movie, son.
You all that truth is that the center of the truth if I would you stand God is manifest in the flesh and the person is Jesus.
Justified in the spirit, there was only one man that ever walked through this world.
That could say if I am not done among you, the works that none other man did you not have sinned, justified the Spirit how the manifestation of the Spirit in his works down here. He was the only one who could say which of you convinces me a sin that was the Lord Jesus Christ.
No other could say that. Just divide in the spirit. Do you hold that truth? Do you? Do you hold that truth? He was the only one. He's the only one, my friend. If you, if you rest your soul on any other.
Disappointed because of that sacrifice that put away all your sins was not made by the Son of God himself, the Holy One. You have no savior, seed of angels, all think of it. In the second chapter of Luke we find the whole heavenly host coming down worshipping their creator. And sorry for the first time. It's a little base in a Manger.
First start that they ever saw.
Their Creator and this one who was known in relationship to Israel as the Jehovah.
And now he's made himself known to the Gentiles.
In the fulfillment of God's promises to Abraham.
See, this takes in the whole scope of truth. It doesn't give us the details of it, but it gives us the scope of it.
Received the lay down in the world. Oh thank God some have to leave Donny and my dear friend tonight. Are you trusting in the precious blood of Christ? Can you say he's my savior? Can you?
Believe down in the world because all those who believed on him in this world, he fought away. Now soon it's coming. It's going to take us home to the Father's house will be his companions Rep those who believe that him in the world received up in the glory.
He gone, and he seated in God's right hand.
You know, some people today have a dead Savior. They don't know Christ any further than that. He went into the grave for them, that's all. I know you're surrounded by them. But my friend, he's gone on high. He's coming back again.
He's coming to take his own home and then he's coming back to judge this world.
Now what we read in the 4th chapter.
Is a warning to us that unless you and I find ourselves at the plate of God's appointment holding these truths.
We're going to find ourselves probably in difficulties in connection with what's set before us in the next chapter. You and I are either under the control of the Spirit of God or reliable to get under the control of another spirit as we have in the next chapter. Seducing Spirit. This is a warning to Chris and them because my friend.
The way Christian commands is that it's enveloped.
With delusion, after the true church is taken out, the great apostasy is coming on and will envelope Christendom. All those who refuse to take their place, but the truth of God, and the truth held in the place where Christ's name is death.
Now in the 16th verse, again we say this is individual.
As to its expectation here.
He's asked, Take heed unto thyself.
And under the doctrine teaching.
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That's what we've had in the 16th verse.
You take heed unto it. Why should we take heed? He wouldn't tell us to take heed if there wasn't a danger.
They're coming, rapping on your doors every day, and if you don't take heed, you don't go on.
In the truth that you know. Bow to it and act upon it. You'll find yourself in trouble. Take heed unto thyself. He's talking to Timothy, a beloved servant. He's warning him.
Continuing or in doing this, thou shall both save thyself. Does he mean he'll save himself from hell? No, he's not talking about that. He's talking about the testimony of God on the earth.
You'll find himself outside of it, under delusion. If he's a real believer, he won't lose his soul, because my sheep shall never bury. But he'll lose his sight like Samson did. He lose his spiritual sight and probably his reward, which he might have had if he'd walked in the path of faith.
And so take heed to the doctor.
In this thou shall save thyself and them that hear thee, because there's somebody watching you all the time. And whether you're preaching the gospel or whether you're simply walking in the path of faith, there are eyes upon you, and you're guiding someone either a right or you're guarding them in the wrong path.
Well, then there is a center that God has set up, and in that center there is the truth that He is placed there. I know men say well to talk that way. That's pride. Is it pride if it's in God's Word and He tells us, whose pride is it? The point is, are you and I going to find ourselves in the place where God Himself has set? The truth is that the House of God is the Church of the living God.
It's the pillar in the face of the truth.
Now are we going to find our place there?
For God himself has said it.
We might save herself from these deducing spirits. My friend will eventually envelope the whole thing. What about the 11 and the three measures of meal?
And what about the what we have the other evening? What was shred into the pot?
The food that was prepared to the people of God. Someone shred the wild doors in and they cry out.
There's death in the past.
Oh yeah, now as we were noticing any life in life, this ministry.
We find first the resentment of Elijah, and he determines he's going to follow Elijah with all his heart. He follows him down through Jordan and he sees him going to heaven. He comes back over Jordan and the power of the Holy Spirit and the spirit of his Master, and he goes back in this.
Reverse order, following those four different places where master has been until he comes to Gilgal. We've seen the path of the individual believer, the purpose of heart following right at the same time. We saw the picture of that extended over the whole period of these 2000 years. We saw the picture of Jordan Jericho.
And Bethel and Gilgal. But now the Spirit of God is bringing us right down close to see a picture of the assembly.
And someone turning back then to the ministry of Elijah.
In the fourth chapter.
Perhaps we can have a picture of just what we've been speaking. Beckon King 4 Now, those of you who may have another translation, I want to call your attention to the fact that in the first verse it should be children. I don't know why the translators reversed it. It should be children. And in the seventh verse it should be son. I don't know why.
But that's the way it is in this translation. It is not that way. Another, the first thought we have here is children. Children. Well, that's adoption, isn't it? Children.
It's the first thing we know and the things of God for the children of God by faith in Christ.
It's the body we were Speaking of the other day. It's the first perceptions in the soul of divine things. The little one cries out, have a father. Oh, how precious. And you know, my friend, everyone that can cry out of father.
Is one of the children of us as long as right at the Lord's table too? Cry of the Father? No, it isn't a question of intelligence. It's a question of nature. Because new creation isn't a question of time or place, but kind. What kind are you? What nature do you have? Are you in the flag? Are you in Christ? Are you an atom or you're one of the children of God?
00:30:15
Can you cry out the Father?
You can if you have the spirit indwelling. It's the first thing we said that Elijah was a picture.
After Elijah's gone online, he's a picture to it.
A price who's on high, sending his Spirit down and working to his servants down here. That's the picture we have in the ministry of Elijah. Christ having now gone on high, he sent down his Spirit.
And worked through his service down here.
So we see Elijah brought into this picture.
Now you notice, Kathy, that this woman is not a widow. It doesn't say she's a widow, but she she has lost her husband.
Well, you say, well, if she's lost her husband, she's a whale, isn't she? But it doesn't say so. Now here don't seem as a widow, but the church is never seen as a widow, seen as a merchant again. The 25th chapter of Matthew will find that.
It's the virgins who have the oil. It's a picture of the present day for those who carry the oil and their vessel. So here is just a woman and son in Scripture is hope.
Christ was the hope of Israel, the Son they were looking for.
So we have in his first verse and children.
But.
If this woman comes to cry to Elijah.
Why, she says, my servant, my husband is dead, and thou knowest if I serve and just fear the Lord, and the creditors come to take on him my two sons or children to be bondsman. Well, the second verse Elijah said unto her, What shall I do for thee? Tell me, what hast thou in the house? She says, thy hand may not anything in the house save a pot of oil. Now you're the case where?
This woman cries to the prophet of God.
And in these first 2 verses she sets before us her knee.
And we see also the resources for that need, although she doesn't herself recognize them. When you and I are first born again, little do we realize either Our Calling or the resources that God has placed there to bring us all the way through. But you know Christ died once, and you'll never die again.
And when he died, the whole work was completed. There will be no more work done, except of course, He's coming to take us and raise our bodies to be like His own body and glory. But as to the work itself, it's all done on the cross. There doesn't need to be any more work done because he said it was finished. It's all finished.
As the apostle followed the 1St chapter of Ephesians, if you'll notice it carefully, he's not praying for anything, but he's just praying to have their eyes open that they might understand.
See what happened when Price rose from the back. He doesn't pray that they might have power. He prays that their eyes may be open.
In other words, you and I have to have space, simple childlike space, to lay hold of the things of God.
Now here's the poor woman. She had no resources, she thinks, and yet in a house are all the resources she needs. And these 7 verses proven. What are they? Some pot of oil. The pot of oil? Now you notice that he asked her a question and he doesn't let her answer it. What shall I do for thee? Tell me what has fell in the house.
Because he's speaking to her conscience. You and I never get any truth.
Except through the conscience. And we never get any new truth until God comes in and awakens us and gives us that truth. Neither will we get any more truth until we acted on the truth He's already given us and opened our eyes to see. And my dear friend, if you're going on year after year, not going in any way in the things of God, remember there's something there that's wrong. You're either not acting on the truth that you know, or you're allowing sin in your life. What does it do?
You and I act on the truth that God has given us. He'll give us more truth. Oh, what a solemn thing it is to pray for life. So God has given us all the life. And if you and I walk in the light we have, we'll just get some more because it's all there. We won't get the next step until you take this. So now this woman is seen as a picture of the assembly here on earth, God's people.
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That's what we have in Timothy, only in a far different way.
Which I believe will give us a seat.
A picture that if we once see it, will be absolutely clear as to the truth, what God needs. First Timothy 3 The House of God, which is the Church of the living God, the pillar and the face of the truth. She says, thy hand may have not anything in the house save a pot of oil. Little does she know that that pot of oil is not only going to.
Deliver her son.
From the credit.
For hope, you see, but she and our house are going to live on that oil. Little does she know that. So that's what's going to take place. You know, when I read this verse, what half down in the house, it comes home to my own conscience. What do I have in the house? Oh, brethren, what are we allowing our houses? What do we allow in our houses? Do we have just what this widow has in and nothing more? Because the oil speaks of the Spirit of God, the present testimony of that Spirit.
And this king speaks of responsibility. It teaches us of our responsibility in connection with that truth. You know, the Lord told his people of all that when he walked through their camp, he didn't want to see anything that he filed if there was anything dead. And they walked through the camp and saw if they were to bury it.
Because when he walked through their camp, he didn't want to see anything that he filed. Oh, my friend, what do we have in our house?
But do we allow it our house? Is it hindering our spiritual growth? This widow had a pot of oil, that's all.
Christ enough for us ministered by the Spirit? Or do we have to have all the things of that this world would offer to entangle our souls until we lose our spiritual sight entirely? Isn't it so? Then he said, now we have the instructions. The 1St 2 verses are the need and the remedy. The next two are the instructions. Then he said, go by the vessels abroad of all thy neighbors, even empty vessels far and out of you.
Now you see the connection with Elijah's ministry.
Ministry, the answer, The vessel is emptied and planned and prepared in the license. Ministry, the vessel is ready now to fill with the oil. It's been empty. And you know, brother, when souls are received in among the Saints as vessels, and then I received this empty vessel, there's a lot of difficulty sometimes. The priest that is in those days should be able to discern whether the vessel was empty or not.
If it isn't empty, it isn't ready to be filled with the oil. The oil is the Spirit of God that's ministered in the bosom of the assembly, the present ministry of the Spirit of God.
Now the gold bar, the levels of all thy neighbors, is really the gospel going out, bringing in the vessels, but going out from the midst of the assembly, outside the assembly that got set up on the earth. Burn out of cube, whosoever will make out.
But when they're brought in, they should be empty. They should be empty. How can you fill a vessel with two things at once? Can you fill it with the world in Christ too, when I come in? Now we have another truth, separation. We have an inside and we have an outside. And in the Church of God as to its representing Christ on the earth, there is a within and there is a without.
A within and when I come in now, just shut the door upon me.
To find my son. Now you notice its sons because it's the dignity of the new position as those that are empty vessels to be filled with the Spirit of God. It's a lovely thing. Empty vessel inside of the closed door now ready to be filled with the oil. Shut the door from me.
Well, that's done. We shall pour out into all those vessels.
And thou shall set aside that with this full, when our time is slipping away. But just this there should be deserving in the assembly to lower the vessel, all there should be discernment. And when God rises up one to go out to gather other vessels, then there should be discernment.
To be a help to such a one, you know the natural heart, how we like to pick one another to pieces. I might as well be frank.
It is natural to it, isn't it? And we allow the flesh to act instead of the Spirit. And we are looking for lots of growth sometimes, and we should look for a heart for Christ and these things.
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And so we should encourage that when we see that a vessel is full.
We should encourage that service of going out together in other methods if the vessel has been first empty. Well, these are many lessons we have here. We must carry on.
So she went from him. Now she's obeying the instructions. The 1St 2 verses are the need and the remedy.
Next, two of the instructions and now the obedience of faith that takes them up. And so we learn new truth. God doesn't repeat himself. So she went from him and shut the door upon her. That's faith. Are you inside of the closed door? Or do you say, well, I can just meet with any of the people of God and it's all right? No, it isn't all right. You know why? Because maybe they're not holding the truth.
Without controversy, great is the mystery of God. In this God is manifest in the flesh and so on. It's where that truth is held pillar in the base of the truth. If you're not there, why you're not behind the closed door. You can't expect the vessel to be filled with the oil. God tells us that where he is, the place must be holy. And if there's an allowance of doctrinal.
Or moral evil.
Is not holy, it's not clean. And so does this. She shut through the door upon her, upon her sons, those and only those who are in the enjoyment of the new position that this position brings. But these truths bring to us. We have in First Timothy three. She went from him and shut the door upon him, upon her sons.
Who brought the vessels to her? Now? Who brought the vessels to her?
Her sons were in the bosom of the assembly, went out, and they brought the vessels back into the assembly. The ministry of the gospel is always in view of the center that God set up. Why? Because if sheep don't have a hole, they'll just get scattered again.
In their case, they'll be worse than the 1St.
Because it's there, they're established in the truth. It can't be established unless they're in disciple. The closed doors, separation from evil, doctrinal and moral evil, with one curiosity before them, ministered by the Spirit. And she poured out, and she poured out. These sons go out, and they gather the vessels in empty vessels, many as they can.
And in the bosom of the assembly the Spirit of God is freedom minister the things of Christ.
Make them grow. And it came to pass when the vessels were full, that she said unto her son. Now we have individual, not the collective testimony. 2 and 3. Going out is still the dignity of that new position. It's Sun, but it's individual, it's responsibility.
Bring me out of vessel 1 vessel. It's not a vessel more, Not a vessel more. And the oil stage. Now does it say the oil stayed and then there were no more vessels brought in? No, it didn't say that. No, God waits until the last one is brought in. Then the oil states. You get the rest of the picture both in the 25th of Matthew and in the second chapter of Second Thessalonians.
In Second Thessalonians, the Spirit of God is taken away from the earth at the same time that the assemblies taken away.
Because my friend, remember when the Spirit of God comes out and dwell, you'll never leave you forever. Never leave you forever. The Scripture teaches us that, oh, what a blessed truth. And we're going to be taken home at the same time that the Spirit leaves. So the next verse is the judgment seat of Christ. Now, I don't want you to misunderstand me tonight. As we said before, we're just drawing a picture here. There's a moral line of truth that runs all the way through it. Elijah's ministry and.
And no doubt a prophetic align as well. And I'm not trying tonight to bring out either one of those lines. All we're trying to do is as we read the New Testament, we're trying to just go back and pick up a little picture. You see, we can't even call it a type, just a little picture that gives an outline how many times when one speaks, one may draw a picture from the world even.
Some happening that happened, but how much better?
When we draw out a picture that God himself placed in his Word years before, hundreds of years ago.
Just to give us a little glimpse, a clearer glimpse of the truth of God that we have in the New Testament. And so now we have then just a picture here. Then she came and told the man of God.
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The little picture was going to take place after the all day.
Discovered in his presence after that's all over and he said go sell the oil to pay thy debt now buying and selling in scripture does not necessarily refer to the fact of your.
Making a purchase.
If the evaluating of it discovery of what it's worth.
At that time of buying your selling, you discover what it's worth, don't you? Now, what's the odd work? Do you know what the oil is worth? Do you know what it's worth to have? The Spirit has got them down from heaven to indwell. Each believer and the assembly on earth. What is it worth? What's the value of its day? The world says nothing. In fact, Christendom says nothing. They put a man in place of the Spirit. They set the Spirit aside.
Not only grieving, but quenching the Spirit of God.
And so the church will know on that day the value of the coming of the Spirit of God.
Say like that.
Oh, your present testimony of the Spirit of God in it we find that the blitz, the dead of the believers, all faith, the work of Christ discovered everything. And now what else live thou, my children of the rest thy sons that should read in this verse. That's everlasting life in connection with that new position that we have in Christ once beggars of the dunghill, now to inherit the throne of glowers.
To be associated with Christ forever.
In his own home, the eternal Son, we are accepted in the beloved One. That's the ministry of the Spirit of God. For today we're children by adoption, in whom you have received an inheritance and a part of the household of God.
Oh what truth is the Spirit of God has brought us in these last days. Revive force again.
Do we value them? We'll know them only in the measure in which we walk in the good of them as we hear them. And we'll learn them only where God is pleased to place His testimony and the Spirit in the midst to teach the things of Christ to us. And that's the place where He's chosen to set the name of Christ in the midst of the House of God, which the Church of the living God, the pillar and the.
Now it's up to you and me to discover where that is, because there's only one body and there's only the representation of that one body. God has not set up anything else, the public representation where God has made a place where He should dwell right now here in this world.
And the rest of his people. It's the place behind the closed door, separated from evil, where the truths of God are made known of the Spirit. And all we need there is what the Spirit himself brings. Do we value what the Spirit is brought, or do we push to the side? Can we introduce men's traditions and the thoughts of man, or are we just a subject as we have here?
The subjection to what God Himself by the Spirit would bring to us.
Are the precious things of Christ. And so you have on those virgins. We'll also add oil and their vessels with their land as they stood beside the path waiting for the bridegroom, they all of them went to sleep. All of them went to but there was a midnight cry made. And those who had oil and their vessels with their last went into the marriage. But those who had no oil, they went to buy when it was too late. And they were the ones who stood outside the door, and they knocked Lord open to us, but it was too late.
I know you're not far from me, workers of Anacortes. Oh what a marvelous thing to know something of the present testimony of the Spirit of God and the place where the Spirit of God is to open up the truth of God to our hearts with God himself except the name of Jesus, except up to you and me to discover where that place is about of the truth of God or.
To be in danger of all the seductions and delusions of the enemy, as little by little wears away those who once taken their place for the two, and then he scattered far, far away.
Until they're lost. And delusion, the enemy of this age, will be one of delusions.
Lecture 4 on Elisha
Address—C.E. Lunden
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Many of our subjects of Elijah I'd like to read first, connecting it with the New Testament, a few verses in Colossians, the Epistle of Colossians, Colossians. The third chapter I'll read one or two words a little different than it as it appears in other translation.
3rd chapter of Colossians. Since you then be written with Christ, seek those things which are above where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God.
Set your mind on things about not on things on the earth for your dad and your life is hit with Christ in God.
When Christ, who is our life shall appear, then shall He also appear with Him in glory.
Mortify, therefore, your members, which are upon the earth.
Fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil can kill the sense, and covetousness.
Which is idolatry, for which things sake the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience. I'd like to read a passage turning back to Philippians. Philippians the last chapter.
It can be nicer to keep these passages in mind as we read later in the Ministry of Elijah.
The fourth verse of the 4th chapter of Philippians.
Rejoice in the Lord always.
And again I say, rejoice, let your moderation be known unto all men.
The Lord is at hand. Be careful for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with Thanksgiving.
But your request be made known unto God, and the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely.
Whatsoever things are a good report, if there be any virtue and if there be any praise, think on these things.
Those things which you have both learned and received and heard and seen in me do, and the God of peace shall be with you.
Now, turning to the 4th chapter of Second Kings, we'll try to connect these passages. We'll start with the eighth verse.
Of the 4th chapter of Second Kings. And it fell on a day that Elisha passed to Shunam, where was a great woman.
And she constrained him to eat bread. So it was that as off as he passed by, he turned in feather to eat bread. And she said unto her husband, Behold now I perceive that this is an holy man of God, which pacifies continually. Let us make a little chamber, I pray thee, on the wall. Let us set for him there a bed, and a table, and a stool, and a Candlestick.
And it shall be when he cometh to us that he shall turn into this. And it fell on a day that he came together.
And he turned into the chamber and lay there. And he said again He died. His servant called his Julimite, and when he had called her, she stood before him. He said unto him, Say now unto her, he Hold down and spend careful for us with all this care what is to be done for thee? Would thou be spoken for to the king?
Or to the captain of the host, she answered. I dwell among thine old people.
And he said, What then is to be done for her? As I answered, Verily she has no child, and her husband is old. And he said, Call her way and call her. She stood in the door. And he said, about this season, according to the time of life, thou shalt embrace the sun. And she said, Nay, my Lord, thou man of God, do not lie unto thine handmaid.
And the woman conceived and bear a son at that season that Elisha had said on her according to the time of life.
And when the child was grown, it fell on a day that he went out to his father, to the reapers. And he said to his father, his father, my head, my hand, he said to Alaska, carry him to his mother. When he had taken him and brought him to his mother, he sat on her knees until noon, and then died.
And she went up and laid him on the bed of the man of God.
Shut the door up on him and went out.
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She called under her husband and said, Send me, I pray thee, of the young men and one of the assets, that I may run to the mammoth God and come again.
And he said, Wherefore will thou go to him today? It is neither new moon nor Sabbath. And she said, It shall be well. And she sat on an *** and said to her servant Dr. And go forward, slack not thy writing for me, except thy busy. So she went, and came unto the man of God to Mount Carmel.
It came to pass, when the man of God saw her afar off, that he said to gaze I his servant, Behold Yonder is that Shunavite run now I friendly to meet her, and say unto her, Is as well with thee? Is it well with thy husband? Is it well with the child? And she answered it as well.
When she came to the man and got to the hill, she caught him by the feet. The gaze I came near to thrust her away.
And the man of God said, Let her alone, for her soul is vexed for dinner, and the Lord has hid it from me, and hath not told me.
Then she said that I desire a son of my Lord. Did I not say do not deceive me?
Then he said to get his eye, Gird up thy loins, take my staff in the right hand, and go thy way. If thou need any man, salute him not, and if any salute thee, answer him not. Again I lay my staff upon the face of the child.
And the mother of the child says, As the Lord liveth, as thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee.
And he arose and followed her.
As I passed on before them, and laid the staff upon the face of the child, but there was neither voice nor hearing.
Wherever he went again to meet him and told him saying the child is not awake.
When Elijah must come into the house, behold, the child is dead, and laid upon his his bed. He went in therefore, and shut the door upon them twain, and prayed unto the Lord.
He went up late upon the child, who put his mouth upon his mouth.
His eyes upon his eyes, and his hands upon his hands, and he stretched himself upon the child in the flesh of the child who waxed warm.
Then he returned and walked in the house to and fro, and went up and stretched himself upon him and the child's knees seven times.
And the child opened his eyes, and he called his eyes and said, Call Miss Shunamite.
So we called her and when she was coming out to him, he said, take up thy son.
Then she went in and fell out his feet, bowed herself to the ground, and took up her son and went out.
We've already been noticing as we started in the first part of this.
Line of things in regard to Elijah that we find Elijah at the plow. Rather unusual thing to see a man was to be a prophet God at the plow.
Let me find that that's connected with the subject in the ninth of Luke, where we have the turning point in that gospel with the Lord. Jesus is rejected, and he begins Speaking of the Kingdom of God and of the Son of man as a rejected what?
And so we find that as Elijah comes along, cast his mammal upon Elijah, and Elijah attempts to follow him, but he tells him as Elijah says, I'll go back and kiss my father and mother. He says, go back again, what have I done to thee? And so Elijah, Elijah perceiving.
What it was about?
The spirit of God laying hold of him, giving him to deserve. Instead of going back to kiss his father and mother, he goes back and he plays his oxen with he is plowed and he takes all the instruments of the oxen and he builds a bonfire.
And there he prepares meat for the people of God with those oxygen. Now he can't go back.
He set his course down. He's on his way to follow Elijah.
Is that the case with you?
Or have you made provision for the flesh?
I believe that's what that means.
All we need purpose of heart to follow Christ. How we need to cut off everything it has been cut off at the cross, but we are not ready to buy faith away hold of it. We're seeing now as death and so Elisha go through Jordan with Elijah.
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The scene of death and identifies himself.
In Death and Resurrection.
With the Lord Jesus Christ, it's a picture of what we have in the New Testament.
And we find that this way that he goes through four cities.
After Elijah has gone up, he retraces those cities, which gives us a little outline of the history of the church here on earth and the ways of God with it. We find too, that.
On our last occasion we were together.
And we have a different picture.
We have a picture now.
None of the whole thing, but just of the assembly on the earth.
In its testimony.
Not the individual blessing, but the corporate thing gathered together as a house character to represent Christ down here.
In separation from the world.
But tonight that we have before us is the state of soul that goes along with such a course. Because, you know, sometimes we think that if we subscribe our name to something, everything is all right. That's the principle of Christmas. But if you and I are going to be maintained in the testimony of God on earth and in the enjoyment of these things in our soul, there has to be a certain state of soul.
And so we have tonight, the great woman.
The the great woman here gives us a picture then of the individual believer who pursues right on to the end in the enjoyment of Christ as his object. It's really a little picture of the book of Philippians, normal Christianity. And so we read just a little bit in Philippians tonight.
We have also in Colossians the picture of.
Setting our mind on things of us since you are risen with right, Setting your mind on things about. Well, that's the position then for the believer now.
I believe what we have here is a picture of it.
Now in this portion that we've read tonight, I believe we have at least seven tests.
And that we can test ourselves as we go along by these tests. The first one is that Elisha comes to shun.
Now you and I recognize because when the Spirit of God is bringing before us something particularly for our own heart and conscience, are we so busy in this life that we haven't time to listen to that still small boy? So they've got if we missed the 1St test, well, I would have missed the second one.
We met the second, we're allowed to miss the 3rd and the first one is that Elisha founds to shoot him. I want to shoot him. Well, it's the city of Israel, but it was the city of Insecure and it was said of Issachar, you know, one of the children of Jacob.
Then you saw that rest was good and the land that was pleasant. It was a prophecy of Issachar.
He was looking around to the inheritance that he hadn't gotten yet.
Well, that's that's the thing you see in the day when the Spirit of God is in control of things down here in the assembly. It's a normal thing for you and me to be occupied with Christ and the inheritance.
That's what he would occupy us with.
He may have to occupy us for a moment with our ways to correct them if we get out of communion.
But he would occupy us with Christ and the inheritance.
That's the way we grow. That's the way we're happy. The new nature can't be happy.
Groveling in the earth.
And so then the first point here is that the prophet comes by and she recognizes him as a prophet of God.
Elijah represents to us our price having gone on high.
The Holy Spirit coming down to see.
And working through His servants down here in this world.
You'll notice in this chapter that.
Elijah does not speak directly to her.
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He does on occasion, but in the main you'll notice that it says.
The 13th verse. And he said unto him, Say now unto her, See, it's indirect.
It's indirect.
It's the Spirit of God now speaking, but He's speaking through whomsoever He will.
So it's an indirect thing. It's a little picture of the present day.
It's important to notice that.
And you'll notice too, at the beginning it says she's a great woman, and now we can see why she recognizes the present testimony and work of the Spirit of God.
She constrains him to eat breath.
Now he would have gone on his way.
Just like the Lord is the as you met with those two on their way to a man, when they got to their destination, he would have gone up, except that they could strain him to abide with them. And you and I, as we go through our Christian pathway down here, we can have just as much of Christ as we want. He's there all the time.
But if we're going to busy ourselves with everything that belongs to this scene, we'll find our souls lean. We won't be in the enjoyment of heavenly things. We won't have power in our lives for good.
Other objects will take our eyes, let our hearts and our feet will get out of the path.
We've become sick in our souls and worthless to the testimony of Christ.
But here is the way you see that the great woman walks through this world.
Why does it say woman? Well, woman speaks a position in scripture whereas man speaks of responsibility.
Abraham is the one who carried out the purchase of God in his day, but his wife Sarah sat on the death door, that is, her place was at home, and she maintained the position that Abraham set forth.
And so it is with the assembly as so it is with this woman here, giving us a little picture of the position that we should take now as individuals.
So she constrained a deep breath and noticed so it was that is off as he passed by.
You see how it's increasing?
Just that little star.
And that is off as he passed by. Well, how many happy times there must have been in that little hole.
As often as he passed by, he turned into his breath.
But now she's going to do something else. She's going to make her vision. So you'll be there, have a place to come all the time. You know what? Someone has asked the question, how can I gain an appetite for the word of God? The answer was read it, read it.
And the more you read it the communion, the more you want to read it.
I believe that's what we have here. And so she said to her husband, Behold, I perceived that this is an holy man of God. You think you and I could go out in communion with him without the recognition of that?
Holy man of God, what does that suggest to our soul? It suggests that if we're going to be in these presence.
That there will have to be holiness in our own walk.
We can't allow you in our lives and expect to go out in communion and the enjoyment of the things of Christ.
Until then, what's the guard?
Right externally prophet of God.
The picture to us of Christ the Spirit and ministers Christ to our soul, that's the remedy for a bad state of soul, is Christ.
There's no power within us to do good unless we have the right object. And as we're occupied with stripes, we're told in Second Corinthians were changed. That's what changes us. It doesn't happen till the flash.
And fresh profit suffering. Having a holy object before us is a change into that same likeness.
In a practical way down here.
So it's a holy man of God that passes by us. How often?
What?
Off continually.
Well, he probably was passing all the time, but she didn't notice it before.
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He didn't notice that they were. It's continuing now. All she says, will have to make him a place to stay.
And so.
We don't get much response from the husband.
And so it is a young man, a young woman will be converted, another woman, they'll tell about it at home, but there's no interest on the part of the rest of the family. Or it might be a whiteness inverted or a husband. They go home and they find that there's no interest in it on the other side, and so they have to go on alone.
As we have here.
And so she makes this living room.
Let us make a little chamber, I pray thee, on the wall or with walls. Let us set for him there a bed and a table, and a stool and a Candlestick, and it shall be when He cometh to us that he shall turn his center. All the simplicity of faith that we have here, when it comes your turning together, do we have that confidence?
Love and brethren, tonight you know what makes confidence?
In our soul, between our souls and Christ. Why that?
That hearing this that comes when we have Christ as the object and The Walking is separation from evil. Practically that brings confidence. We find on the 14th of John that is the promise is that the Father himself and the Son will come and make their goal, but it's in connection with the keeping of his commandments.
It's in connection with walking in the path of faith. Now that isn't that isn't the commandment of Moses.
That's all. It isn't keeping the law to get anything. It's simply the heart and the enjoyment of what places here because you know there's someone you love. Their desire is a command to you, isn't it, when you discover.
So then we have a bed, a place we can rest now, putting this practically tonight.
Does the Lord Jesus be able to rest in your home or is there something that's Mars or the Holy One?
It's the Spirit of God free in your home or mind. Is there something there that would would hinder that joy from coming out?
He sings sometimes you don't have high an object Lord below.
Do I have an object that would divide my heart with me? And how many times we discover that we have objects?
That would divide the heart from Christ.
No, she has a place where you can rest.
Gucci Digital later, because she needed this little room and she needed that bed and she needed it awfully bad later. And so, as I say again, unless we notice these steps, these pets, and find ourselves following them, we're going to find bitterness in our lives.
Now what's next? A table communion?
Oh, gracious.
Where the prophet of God. The rest are now at table for communion.
Well, that of course, in our own meditation can be developed. We find a minute test with. And what's the stone for? Well, someone has said that Mary considered his feet, and I suppose there were many, many at pleasant days that woman spent at the feet. At least Lystra at least ministered grace to her heart. And how many times, brethren, do we find ourselves at the feet of Jesus, enjoying the truth?
And now the result is a Candlestick. That's the light that that must be there. If the others are there, they can't help it be because, you know, testimony is the overflow of a heart taken up with Christ.
And one who goes out to to give out the gospel. Unless Christ is the object, it's worthless.
It's just the flesh, unless Christ is the object.
So we find the candlesticks of testimony. And so she was confident that when he came along, he would stop there. And he did. He did. He always answers Faith. Faith is never disappointed.
But now you bind the table, turning you and I can't do a thing for Christ, but what there will be a reward.
00:25:06
You dear young people, want blessing in your life and then put Christ first. They'll be blessed.
That can't help but be blessing you, read on the 21St Psalm. He has set him to be blessings.
And that's what Christ is, You know, in the coming day, in the millennial scene, he's coming forth as king, and that's pretty as King Dirulu and his priest to dispense royal grace and blessings to his people. And he will do it now for all those who make him the object of their heart. You'll notice here that the woman is called Ashuna Life.
We were suggesting why?
That was her inheritance. But you know that the children of Israel were in a bad way and they were under idolatry.
And they were the target for their enemies at this time.
God had promised them blessings in their land that they didn't. They couldn't enjoy them. And you know, right now, you and I find ourselves as we're in between.
Soon the Lord will come to take us home, but now we have the privilege of thy faith.
Enjoying in anticipation that inherits. Looking forward to it. And that's what the Spirit of God would occupy us with at present. Without vision, the people will perish.
Now we have a blessed hope coming of the Lord to take us home to be with himself. That's the blessed hope. And so she's called to shoot him right here.
A little later, she's called the mother.
We noticed already that she's been called a woman, the great woman.
That just a way of making the subject a little more interesting by using a change of words. I don't think so. We learned that the word of God is pure. That means that every word has a distinct purpose.
And so when she's the Shunamite.
He's commending the faith that lays hold of the inheritance. When she's the mother, it's the affections that are in view.
And when she's the woman, it's just the face of the person.
Maintain your position, you'll notice that as we go along.
Now she's going to be tested again. This is the second test in the 13. First he called Gaza. Who said that call the shoe line. When he called her, she stood before him. He said, I need to say now unto her, Behold, thou has been careful for us with all this care, what is to be done for thee, which thou be spoken for to the king or the capital host. She answered, I dwell among mine old people.
What an answer.
What an opportunity. Perhaps the king would have set on a banquet for this woman if the Elijah had said so.
What others, or perhaps the captain of the host, would have arranged the parade in honor of this woman? We don't know what might have happened if Elijah had spoken the word. No, she said. I dwell on my own people.
She tested and there are young people here tonight. The world makes an awful appeal to our hearts.
But you know, just at the time when Moses was great, he was head over ready to take the throne of Egypt. That he chose. When he became great, that he chose, what did he choose? He chose to dwell among his old people.
If Moses had continued in the palace when he became of age and great, he would have been living a lie.
Because.
He was an Israelite, not an Egyptian.
And how many there are today who are living a lie in this world? They say they're a Christian and yet they live in this world.
Moses might have had his high level special tool.
Name is Stride in heaven tonight.
Over the difference, this world knowledge story is going to pass away.
This was a great woman. She didn't even make the choice. That's what makes her greater still. She left it to the prophet of God to make the charge for her. They gave her the same blessings that God gave Abraham.
A child in view of the inheritance.
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Because everything depended on a woman's seasonal, everything depended on that with Christ, and it was the inheritance that was in view.
Until we find her now.
Not choosing first out, but just leaving everything to him. All that simple trust and confidence.
How much are being tested? Are we going to choose our own pastor? This world would be disappointed.
The one who created us now wants our hearts to respond in simple confidence. They Lord under 6/1. Just a path out for me that I'm still walking. How many have made their own choices? How many young people have chosen companions? Companions.
Know what bitterness.
So long bitterness.
Until it is in business in many other ways, leaving crisis, it won't do it. Now this woman, she says, who is choosing, I'll be satisfied. Is that the way it is? With your heart, are you willing to stay? If you survive day by day civil dependence, you will be happy.
So this season recorded the time of life I'll show. Embrace the sun.
Nay, my Lord, thou man of God.
She was a holy man before, now is a man of God for us.
See, her face is increasing, her life increasing, she's growing in her soul because she's observing these cats rightly.
Do not lie as I'm having, but it all came about.
And now she's going to be tested again. All you're saying, down to four women who left a long little while without work being tested, tested all the time. You know, so we're here in just a few years to think of what's coming, think of the glory that they had. You know, here we're being formed, each stone and being shaped for his place up there and.
There's a path to continual test as long as we're in this world.
God has great things for these people, and you're not going to leave it the first principle.
You want to enlarge your heart, He would have to go to good work in you, Lithium says.
Shall complete it until the day of Jesus Christ. No, he won't leave her alone.
So just as she gets this done, what is the language here?
18 birds and when the child was grown and fell on the baby and went out to his father to the reapers.
He said to his father. My head, my head. I suppose it was a sunstroke, he said to the lab. Carry him to the shooter, right? No, no, no.
Infections. Now that's the way we grow.
We're going to touch the heartstrings.
With the mother, when you've taken him and brought him to his mother, sat on her knees, her knees until noon, and then died noon.
That's the middle of the day. That's when things are the brightest for nature. Everyone's coming our way. A good job.
A nice family, everything we need, everything is pleasant. And then the crash goes, oh, you say how terrible, how terrible, how blessed.
Why?
Because now when she gets her son back to see, she's going to get him back in resurrection life.
She's going to have all her blessings now in connection with Christ up there in the glory because everything down here.
Setting your affections on it.
All that God would register our souls from it.
The desire for these things down here that are hearts of Christ, but not just Christ as he's known on earth, as a man, as he sees his bed with glory. God's right there.
That's what the apostle waters in the book of Philippians to transfer the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
That was before the impossible. Yes, everything here and all wondering nature suddenly express.
So that she can have better faith. The Clash doesn't like it.
00:35:00
But that's what brings light to the Spirit was told in the book of life to the Spirit. And you know we will have life in the Spirit for all eternity.
That's right, my dear friends, tonight, if you don't know Christ, as you're saying, now is the time. Now you see me. You can't bump up tomorrow if you don't have Christ is your safety. You will never have any part of what we're Speaking of the other night.
Now what does she do?
Oh, she's crushed. Or is she?
Oh, how beautiful is this? Woman asked.
A great woman. Notice what she does.
She went up. That's the first thing she went up.
He didn't go down.
A good thing. A man not too long ago and he was down. It was right down at the bottom. This one went up and went into trouble. He went up.
And laid him, that child, on the stand of the man of God.
You can see what I mean about observing one of the tests. If she had to make that little room, she never had a bet to lay that child on.
The head of the man of God.
Oh my dear fellow Christians, are you and I going on with Christ and our soul these days?
Where is your life going? Hand up down here? A ruin perhaps your your mind gone and everything else because of the trouble.
Comes into your life will not walk in the pathway. How many times we've seen it over and over again. The souls will go on heedlessly and the things of God as though it doesn't make any difference at all.
Here we find this woman step by step.
She's in the enjoyment of communion with the prophet of God, with the fighters of Christ, most of our experience to our souls. So step by step she laid away from blessing of her own life. Is that what the apostle speaks of and he says working out your own salvation.
Enjoyment up and down here for ourselves, little by little.
But what else does she do?
She shut the door apart.
She went out. But to do that with your trouble, because Christ was the object you could have. Christ meant everything to you. Christ meant more than the child.
Well.
You know, Son in Scripture would suggest the thought of hope.
As well to keep that in mind as we read that.
Now what's she going to do?
Go ahead and get under the burden. No, no, it hurts. All well.
She called her husband.
But.
He doesn't respond.
No, he won't respond. She does it again.
She wants to run to the man of God and come again.
And that's what Abraham did. You know, when he offered up Isaac, he said I'm going up to sacrifice.
We're going up and we're going to come again.
That's amazing. That's faith and resurrection life.
Same thing here as we have with Abraham.
Now he suggests that there's no particular holiday.
Holy day, we should say, in which you might go and observe that I suppose he was set before us. Traditional religion.
It would act before God on certain occasions because it was ordered itself. But this woman suggested to us, a believer who's in the enjoyment of Christ and her soul, she's going to go to her knee not because of traditional admission. She's going to the man of God who lives on the hill. It makes you think of Christ in the heavenly places.
Is our great High Priest.
And he tells us to come for seasonable health just when we need it.
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Is he there to wait on us?
Time when he was here in this world and the woman.
Of May was about to carry her son out and bury him. Well, just as she goes out to the gate of the city, she turns into Jesus standing there.
All is it not always, though, when Peter's wife's father was sick of a fever.
They just turned and Jesus is standing there and they just saw him.
If we'd have time to go over the previous chapter, the third chapter of this book, we find 3 kings in the wilderness without water.
Jehoshaphat among them, one of the kings of Judah.
And they turned in Elijah standing there.
And Elijah is standing there.
Ready to provide water for them. And it's all was sold. We can always count on our great high place. No matter what happens, it's always there. And even though the natural light doesn't see him, the eye of faith knows he's there at all times. And then he's there for that one person to serve his people down here.
You know, we're not blessed. Savior came into this world. He came to serve. He says I'm ammonia as well. I'm deserve it. When he went on high, he went up and he said there were those who wait for him in the 12Th chapter of Luke and watch for him. He said he's going to when he comes back, he's going to guard himself. The towel service.
Always say and now he's.
He's the object of this woman when she goes.
She didn't know about anything either.
And she went and came to the man of God from Mount Carmel. That's God's fruitful field.
It's a place that she had often been in spirit and it was an easy place for her to go to.
Prep stuff, then the Christians who have gotten.
Walking carelessly most of their lives.
When they want this conference, they can't get it.
They haven't been making you a habit to be an interest, and they don't know much about Mount Carmel, God's crucial field. And they're afraid to go Christian when you try to comfort them and you can't leave them there.
They just don't seem to understand.
And yes, it's offense to 50. You see, they haven't taken these steps one at a time.
As soon as she goes to.
We find in the 25th verse.
Amanda Garstar far off, just like the father saw the chronicle of far off. Same way God is watching the good of his own. And I have God is following his people because of the shooting right now.
She's going to claim her inheritance.
At least that which would continue it see to it that she got an inheritance. She'd never get them without that son, you know.
She had no son.
You know what that meant to a woman in Israel. She had no inheritance for to be carried on.
Going after that, are you, are you going after the inherited? Are you just there in the present down here?
So he's tested by a drop, he said. Well, Oh yes, she says everything well.
Could you say that?
She wasn't going to open her heart through anything.
Why? Because she has spiritual perception she can detect.
A man who is not a man of God.
Hated I in the next chapter so it's full of leprosy. She was able to detect that she hasn't done it. She wouldn't open her heart to get his eyes nor would she go with him when the Prophet sent him to heal the child.
Pico will be as a child.
All the gentlemen given with those who walk with strike with the opposite the following steps one by one, and the enjoyment is mine at all times.
And I'm going to thrust her away from the property and she's seeking.
These days I didn't have the mind of God.
Man of God still matter of all, her soul is back for dinner.
And I didn't know that.
She said that I desire a son of my Lord. The whole truth is out thou.
Now she's let out the truth, she's unburdened her heart. And the moment he hears that, he knows what the trouble is. The Lord hidden from him.
00:45:09
So, James, are you Go down.
I'm going to feel loyal to take my staff in in your hand and go sideways and meet any man. Don't believe any salutary after not again lay my stamp on the face of a child. It's a case of life and death.
He's testing the lemon the 31St.
And the mother of the child said.
As the Lord liveth, and as thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee.
All to have that attachment to Christ in person.
A marvelous computer here there's a soul that it might constant exercise. It's fortified for the day of trouble.
The one who goes on carelessly finds themselves in a position like this, without resource, because their own mind and heart, without a community. The resources always there, but they're not in the enjoyment of it. Well, the Hazard mission brought no good at all.
No, Sean was not awake.
And so it is with the flash the Word of God gives us to see the end of it. Here there's no truth.
His eye was one who professed to be a servant of Elijah, but we learned his character later. It's all covered over with nothing, but he was a coveted land. He was not acting in the presence of God. This woman was.
When Elijah was coming into the house, 30 second verse behold, the child was dead and laid upon his bed. Now that truth has to be made clear.
We were noticing the other evening that.
Elijah himself had to go through Jordan, the river of death and identification with Elijah.
He had to go through that with him. It's a picture of his death described Not only Christ, therefore, but our association with Christ and His death. But how about our blessings?
Our blessings going to be on the other side of Jordan, where we came from. No, they're all up there, and that's what our soul has to learn.
1000 years invited for a woman and she goes through these trials. We find that at the end, it's all right. It's just give her a little more for her so she goes up, up, up all over.
In your soul experience now she sees all her blessings. You see a resurrection.
Her life and resurrection, a new creation. That's where all our blessings are. Somebody, a Christian, has seen themselves a clear and clean, every spot washed away, and they know that they're secure for all eternity. Still don't realize they're blessings. They're not gonna open it. They've blessed us with every spiritual blessing, human, heavenly.
In Christ Jesus, bless in Christ Jesus and with Christ Jesus.
There won't be any blessings separate for each of us. It's all in and with Christ and it's up there where He is. You know, eternal life is only known really in the place where it belongs.
And that's in the Father's house we anticipated by face now.
John says he writes these things that we may know, that we have eternal life.
Rather than that day when we hear the shout, what will it be like?
To be in the Father's house, be surrounded by everything that's of God. There won't be one thing tomorrow, one thing to hinder that joy.
And all things will be of God himself without character, God himself and joy, and you'll have the same joy that God himself.
Can you join me now?
You and I will enjoy it if we're occupied with Christ.
And enjoy it. Well, now one or two more points in the close.
The child is dead.
The child is laid upon her staff. All that comfort that woman brought to herself as she as she observed these tests with the grocery life. But comfort now she tried.
00:50:05
The very place where the Prophet rested in her son is resting.
Isn't that beautiful?
Oh, I think that's precious. But now notice from 34th verse.
And he went up and he went up. That's what the Spirit of God wants us to do. He wants us to rise in our soul.
And my path in the back, Yes, let's start now. Right now, let's start going up.
Soul experience. Christ is the object, and he went up and lay upon the child.
We've done this before. Perfect identification. You know when we hear the shout, we're caught away.
It will be just like it in every respect.
Just like Christ.
Well, that'll be blessed, just like that.
And when God looks at his children, you'll see them all, just like if you read in the in the priesthood in the Old Testament, you'll see that that Aaron had a coat.
And let him start his habitat just like him.
Well, they just like Christ in that day, just like Him.
But the point of the what we've had before us on previous evening connection with the Elijah's ministry that he wants us to be morally like him now and that's the purpose of these exercises that there might be continue to dropping off of those things that belong to a scene of death. Brethren, aren't they the great flow.
When the Lord Jesus raised Lazarus.
He didn't take off the great clothes, No, he told those who stood by. He says you do, and so we make them amongst our brethren. Don't stay away from your brethren. You'll miss a lot mixed in and out among our brethren. And little by little brave clothes get dropped off, don't they?
All the grain flows that attaches to a scene of death, and especially in a religious way.
They have to be all thinking awful.
And so perfect identification. Now this is the believers hope. It might be just like right in the flesh of the child, right before they return and walk to and fro.
Walked in the house to and fro and went up. He went up.
And stretched himself and the child leaned 7 times. The child opened his eyes now.
If I had that in the first of Genesis.
The Lord please God, man, and he became a living soul.
But we find here seven times the Lord Jesus said I'm come to give life and to give it more of money that more abundance.
It's eternal life. It's not life in the first man. And they God says the end of all places come before.
Friend, if you don't have this life.
You won't have any. You'll have internal death. If you haven't put your trust in Jesus Savior, you'll have eternal death.
Of his life and this kind of life, Devon would speak to us and that life is in the spirit.
Spiritual perfection. And just like that, eternal life is the place where it's known the Father's house. That's the end of the belief. It's not an inheritance down here.
The woman of ethnic care was looking forward to being everything in ruins. Then Hebrews says, say that please say such things. Declare that they seek a country heaven.
So you and I are looking forward now not to an inheritance down here. This place is going to burn soon. You and I have our portion with Christ and Lord, but she's tested once more.
And so on the 36th verse he called Gehazi and said call the Shunammite.
So he called her. When she was coming around to him, he said take up my son.
Then she went in and fell out his feet, bowed herself to the ground and took up her stun, and went out on the sea. The Prophet was more to her than her son.
00:55:03
And where there's faith, Christ is more to us than the inheritance.
There's no communication.
Should the soul was incommunicate as precious?
The personal price, the one who made us, the one who wants to make us happy, is the only one that can build these hearts with joy and happiness. He'll be the same thing for all eternity. Why not now?