1 Kings 19
Demonstration of power never invigorates the soul, unless it is connected with private communion with the Lord, and then, it is the communion and not the power which confers the blessing. The power is to give effect to service, but is always followed by depression and disheartenment unless the soul is kept in secret nearness to the Lord. We learn this from the chapter before us. Here was Elijah after witnessing one of the most marvelous demonstrations of the Lord's power on earth: " The fire of the Lord fell, and consumed the burnt-sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench:" besides this, there was also a great rain in answer to Elijah's prayer. So that there had been a double manifestation of God's power; one to corroborate the mission of His servant, the other to bless His people. Yet, after all, we find in the next paragraph, that Elijah is so disheartened and fearful, that he fled for his life a day's journey into the wilderness, and requested for himself that he might die! In this state, the angel of the Lord -comes to him to prepare him for a journey to the Mount Horeb; and then, having eaten nothing for forty days and forty nights, he is instructed that the Lord (as for him) is not in the great and strong wind which rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord; nor in the earthquake, nor in the fire, but in " the still small voice." He is in that secret, invisible, noiseless communication which " no man knoweth but he which receiveth it." When Elijah heard the latter, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out, and stood in the entering in of the cave. His soul responds to the unmistakable voice of the Lord; the sheep knows His voice. The manifestations of His mighty power had no such effect on him. And this is our experience if we have but retirement and abstraction enough from nature to observe it. The soul must be in a listening attitude in order to distinguish (if I may so say) the peculiar notes of the voice of the Lord. The listening attitude is morally typified by Elijah's position at the mount of God; alone, and without food; subsisting only on God's provision for him. When nature clogs, and the world confuses, we shall not easily distinguish the " still small voice" from the voice of His wonders; nor, on the other hand, will mere solitude, miserable solitude, under a juniper tree in the wilderness, adapt us for spiritual apprehension. It is solitude with God at Horeb, unsustained by nature, that is the true preparation for spiritual judgment and instruction. We find after performing a great miracle that the Lord constrained His disciples to get into a ship. (Matt. 14) There they were toiling in rowing, and He saw them, and yet He came not to them until about the fourth watch of the night, and then would have passed by them. The effect of the demonstration of His power in the miracle had passed away, and that event could not avail them now. If it had enlarged their faith in the Lord they would have had a gain from it now; but then it would have been from the Lord, and not from the evidence of His power. The Lord wished to establish the value of Himself to them, and to teach them, that the acts of His power were only proofs of His own value; but that proofs could never suit in emergency without Himself. Miracles were to prove the value of His interest in His people, but in no wise to supersede the greater gain of nearness to Himself. After the miracle His disciples are placed in such an exigence that, unless He draws near, there is no hope of escape, but, when he does," immediately the wind ceased; " and at this they are amazed, evidently not having learned from the miracle what they ought; even, that He who wrought it was not merely displaying His power on one occasion, but thereby expressing His interest in those for whom His power would at any time be in operation. In the histories of God's people in the Scriptures we find that continually humiliation and disaster immediately succeed some signal mark or demonstration of God's power in their behalf. Why is this? Simply because to be signalized is always dangerous, unless the soul is simultaneously kept conscious of the necessity of dependence on God. When the disciples told the Lord that even the devils were subject unto them, He replied, " Rather rejoice that your names are written in heaven." What God is to me is greater than anything God does before me.
No sooner is the song for the marvelous deliverance from Egypt ended, than the children of Israel are murmuring on account of Marah. What does the great demonstration of power in the passing through the Red Sea avail them now? They must realize their dependence on God as every present help in time of trouble. The great deliverance proved to them His value, but Himself and not the proof is the only sure blessing in every time of need; and therefore the needs-be that we should be brought into such trying circumstances.
When David reaches the summit of regal consequence, he numbers the people; but in his humiliation he learns God in a way and manner that he had never known before; just as in his fall respecting Bathsheba he had learned the depth and magnitude of God's restoration; so now he learns in the hour of humiliation a fuller revelation of His mind than ever before made known to any one. Not that it is good to fall, but God's grace is a greater thing to my soil than the acts of His power, and therefore David advanced more in moments of repentance than he ever did in any season of honor and glory. Paul found more strength to his soul from the communication, " My grace is sufficient for thee," than from all the evidence of the glory of which he was a wondering spectator.
The source of strength and blessing to man is in dependence on God. The tendency of a manifestation of power is to make me independent of God, as having power on my side. There is ever a craving for power in the natural mind because the thought of man since the fall is, that if he had power he could do better for himself than God would do for him. Man did not primarily in his nature deny the power of God; he distrusted His love, and as His power without love could not be trusted, the power was distrusted too, but at the same time it was always desired.
Men may own God's power abstractedly, but His love-never. They, therefore, seek the one to accomplish what their own love for themselves, not what God's love for them, would seek for in it. They have no faith. Man would use any borrowed power, and personally glory in it; consequently, the moment man is engaged by the power of God, apart from communion with Himself, it must be a snare to him, and must leave his soul barren and unfruitful. It is God Himself who strengthens the soul. " The Lord stood by me and strengthened me." The consciousness that the Powerful One LOVES me and is beside me, is the true invigoration of the soul. When Elijah heard the " still small voice," he returned to his work like an omnipotent man. When David was at the threshing-floor of Araunah the Jebusite, he was in spirit and intelligence more advanced, than ever he had been before; and when Paul said, " I take pleasure in infirmities, &c., that the power of Christ may rest upon me," he had reached the summit of moral glory.
I like to see the power of God that I may magnify His name; but the more I do so, the more do I desire in my own soul to realize, in an unseen, unmistakable nearness, that He is my God; and the latter is always dearer to me than the former, because the more distinctly I know Him, the more sincerely can I join in magnifying Him. Have we not seen gifts and distinct powers from God become a snare to the church, and the possessors of them, over and over again? The soul is more occupied with the expression than with the heart of Him from whom it came. Powerful teaching blesses me just in proportion as I can realize the love of Christ, of which the teaching is the exposition. If I am engaged with the exposition, as I might be by a poem, then it is mental and not spiritual. It is, in fact, beyond me, and if my conscience demand at some time hence my accordance with the results of the exposition, I discover that I received the exposition, and felt the power of it, without appropriating it to myself as the very sentiments of God's heart toward me. The consequence is, I am worse off than if I never heard, for I am humbled when I reckoned on gain. Real power, after all, consists in the inward sense it produces, not in the outward demonstration of itself. Paul would rather speak five intelligible words than possess the gift of tongues as a mere demonstration of power. People sometimes wonder at the manifestations of God's power, as if they were total strangers to the manner and greatness of it in their own souls. An undue place is given to that which nature can more readily apprehend, for with nature it is always from the outward to the inward, instead of vice versa.
May we be spiritual enough to own every gift and power from God as given, to the church, from the church, and for the church; but also may we know the " still small voice," the secret communion, the unseen fink which should be our real resource rather than and beyond any demonstration of power.