2 Kings 7
There is one singular characteristic of the Bible, the book of God, which you will not find in any other book. For while other books treat of the misery of man, and some treat upon his future state, and what he possibly might be, and what might be the end of that condition, there is only one book in the world, and that is the book before me, that proposes a real relief for the misery of man at the present moment. There is only one book in the world with that peculiar characteristic, and that is the Bible; and that is what makes it the Word of God. I put that in the face of every caviler. He may deny the contents, but he cannot deny that it presents perfect and permanent relief for man in his misery this moment. Is there nothing to rest on here (if you are a restless soul) if such a thing should be proposed to you as a present, a perfect, a permanent relief, from the misery of your condition, that you dare not contemplate? I say, beloved friends, it is an astounding characteristic, and I challenge the whole world to bring anything to contradict it. But you may say, How can I be assured that it is true? Well, beloved friends, it stands not upon external evidence but upon inherent virtue. And the very argument that would not stand for a moment about the most trivial things, about the most trivial pain—that argument is allowed to stand regarding that which is of the deepest concern to everyone; and that is the state of your souls. And what is that argument? If I can show a remedy that will relieve the commonest pain, and if I have a dozen witnesses to establish the validity of that cure, I would be believed.
But then I start from the fact that God comes in all His greatness, and He says, I provide a relief for the misery of man, and I do not relegate it to the future, I do not postpone it to the future, it will be in its fullness by and bye, but you shall have it now. What a marvelous characteristic? It is unspeakable, beloved friends.
And before I go into my subject, I say one word more: there is not one thing that any soul on this earth can do that delights God more than to say, I am perfectly happy this moment in what God is to me. For the soul to say, “Well, I am perfectly happy in what you are to me,” makes God delighted. He delights in your perfect happiness. As the scripture puts it, “This shall please the Lord better than an ox or a bullock.” No amount of sacrifice or of devotion could please the Lord better than the fact that I am perfectly happy, under any circumstances, in the knowledge of His favor.
The very fact that he has that feeling towards me shows what an interest he takes in us.
Well, now, I say that in this book (having stated that great characteristic) it is put beyond all cavil, I do not argue for its authenticity, but for its virtue. That is the way to prove the validity of the cure. How do men bear witness to the validity of a cure? They give a number of testimonials, and people say, Well there is a cure. And was there ever a cure had more testimonials than the fact that he that believeth in Jesus has everlasting life? I state that first because of the caviling that there is abroad, which only shows how little people are prepared for what God is in His goodness, and how little they know of the goodness of God in dealing with men.
If He is good he must reveal Himself. Here is man upon the earth, and will God reveal Himself? If He is good He reveals Himself.
The Old Testament is dealing with man as natural. It is not that it is a history, but you get instances recorded in the book in order to set forth how God will act in grace toward man. And you get in the Old Testament instances in the simplest way, so that the child can understand it. You understand the nature of the grace: you get it in the simplest form; addressed to any capacity.
In the New Testament you get it presented in the permanent spiritual action. It is first presented naturally in the Old Testament, and then it is presented spiritually in the New.
Now, here then what we have presented is this: It is a great famine and the famine, was so great that we read in the previous chapter, at the 25th verse: “There was a great famine in Samaria: and behold, they besieged it, until an ass’s head was sold for fourscore pieces of silver, and the fourth part of a cab of dove’s dung for five pieces of silver.”
The famine is the first thing brought before us. God has to do with realities, and there is no use in proposing to relieve unless you have the pressure. There is no use of proposing a relief unless you are suffering from something. Hence the first thing, the first reality, is that I am under a terrible pressure—under the pressure of failing life. Life is failing and there is a famine—because a famine is the sense that the supply of food is gradually diminishing and life is gradually ebbing. Death is brought to stare you in the face, and you have to stare death in the face. The food is gradually failing away, and you are gradually feeling, Well, I am getting weaker and weaker; I am approximating to death. Death is the judgment of sin.
The first great thing you get in the prodigal son is how he awoke to his condition. That is the first great reality: you awake. The Philippian jailer retires to his rest at night quite satisfied with the way that he has done his business as a respectable man. He is awakened by the earthquake, and he sees the future in all its dark outlines before him. That man was not spiritually awake when he went to his rest that night; now he is awake. Why? He sees the famine.
I put it plainly to everyone (I have been brought to it myself), Have you ever been brought to look death straight in the face? Have you been brought to the edge of the precipice, and you were hanging over it, and a voice said “Look up, look up, if you look down you are lost.” You do not know what relief is, if you have never had pressure.
When young I was brought by the fear of the cholera to lie upon the floor and read the Bible four times a day. I was afraid to die. Did you ever come to close quarters with death? You cannot understand what real relief is unless you have.
God brings the famine to let you understand the reality. There are only two realities: the one is the reality of your state under the judgment of God; and the other is the relief from that judgment.
Let me say a word about Satan. People say they don’t dislike to be saved and to hear the word of God. Yes, I say there is no natural reluctance. Man suffers from two forces. He suffers from the force of the evil power that acts upon him, like the maniac; and he suffers from weakness, like the woman who had spent all she had upon physicians. One is the force of violence that acts upon him in spite of himself—that is Satan; and the other is the force of weakness. If any unconverted soul here were to see the coil of the serpent that is round his heart it would terrify his life out. What would I say if I saw young people going down the street, and I saw a great giant, coming and bandaging their eyes. Would not I feel my blood stirred to relieve these poor youths? What is that in comparison with satan blinding their eyes, to shut out the light of God’s own Son. He is shining here at this moment. Why does not everyone see it? Because satan hath blinded their eyes. I think it is enough to terrify a person when you come to understand it. If our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost, in whom the god of this world hath blinded their eyes, that they should not see the glory of God in Christ Jesus. He is shining. You say you do not see him. It takes an eye to see. Many a man does not see the light of the sun. You may see natural light, but you do not see spiritual light. You have to get an eye to see.
The first thing God brings in is the famine. They are in this state that things are coming to their worst. They are gradually a day older and a day worse. What the world as a rule is like, is the consumptive in an hospital. They are becoming worse, but they do not think they are to die. I knew a lady in that condition, who lately told me that she thought she was getting better, and she died that day! They think they are retrieving ground in their condition. You don’t feel the pressure.
The great expression of the grace of God came out in the night of death, when you read in Exodus that there was not a house where there was not one dead. That was the night that God said, Now, take the blood, and when I see it I will pass over. Why? Because the reality of things was there. They were brought to the reality of their state. When the soul sees it is under the judgment of the holy God, that is where the grace comes in.
Here is the death that is before me; here I am like the thief on the cross, he is just on the verge when the Son of God steps in, and says, I will bear the judgment; let him go free. That is grace: I am in the enjoyment of grace when I see what is done.
Here you have the famine, and now comes in the very height of it the prophet of God, and he announces grace. He says, “Tomorrow at this time flour shall be sold at an incredibly low price.” That is grace. The lord on whose hand the king leaned says, “If the Lord would open the windows of heaven, might this thing be.” And the prophet said, “You will see it with your eyes, but you won’t taste it.”
It is a sad case when a man will not believe what God says. And so now I meet a man and ask him, What do you think of God sending His Son into this world to die for you? Well, you are like this great lord, you won’t believe it. It is a sad thing that any should hear of the grace of God and not believe on His Son. Scripture says, “It is the greatness of a king to pass by a transgression.” Where is the greatness of God, I should like to know? The greatness of God is to give His Son a ransom so that he should be able to forgive sin—not merely to pass it by, but to forgive it. God’s own arm has brought salvation, and He has so loved the world that He gave His own Son. If there is any soul here that feels his heart beating at the prospect of the awful gulf that is before him, what a relief he has here, to know that God has provided a ransom; that God Himself has sent forth His light into my heart. The famine is over; the bread of life has come. The unbelief of this lord is a sad sight to look at.
It is a pleasant thing now to turn round and ask who receives it. And we have this in the same Scripture.
As I say, the Bible is not a history; it is a collection of incidents put forward in order to describe to us the manner of God’s dealing with man. First, the Old Testament describes how he dealt with Adam; and man in every instance was a failure. The New Testament is occupied with the Second Adam, where everything is done according to His mind., The first has to go out, because He was a failure; and the second has to come in, because he did everything good. The first ruined me, and the second saved me. Which do you belong to? There is lac excuse for any one. But I say I was born with the first Adam. But if you look to the second, you are saved. He that looked, lived—he that believes on Him shall be saved.
I sometimes hear people say, I don’t know whether He died for my sins or not. I answer, by asking this question, Have you ever seen Him? Seen Him! How can I see Him? But that is the point for you. I see Him by faith. Don’t ask me whether He died for me or not. Did you ever see Him? You will find that he that looked lived. Don’t you try and make difficult what God makes plain.
There is an old saying, that might is right. But Christ says that sight is right. Sight is Right. Tell me would you see Christ? Look not to Adam but to Christ; because He will judge the secrets of the hearts by Christ. He will judge you by what is in you. And therefore it is the question now, What think ye of Christ? don’t tell me what you think of Adam, but of Christ. I turn now to what is more interesting to us; and God grant, beloved friends, that these things I set forth now may not rise up in judgment against us.
I turn now to those who have received this blessing and who eventually became the great evangelists of it—because the way to be an evangelist is to learn of Christ ourselves.
The first evangelists were angels. They came down and evangelized the shepherds on the plains of Bethlehem, saying, “There is born unto you this day a Saviour who is Christ the Lord.” The shepherds refused their rest that night when they heard of this. They dropped the flocks—let them mind themselves—and went off to see the Saviour.
Is that in your heart? I want you to drop your flocks and what is nearest to your heart, and go to seek your Saviour.
The shepherds became the next evangelists, they went about and told everybody what they had seen.
Well now, I turn to those who received the blessing. There were four lepers, and now we will look at them. These four lepers “said one to another,” as we are told, “There were four leprous men at the entering in of the gate; and they said one to another, why sit we here until we die? If we say we will enter into the city, then the famine is in the city, and we shall die there; and if we sit still here we die also.”
Now we have got the true state; we have got the reality. They said, if we sit here we die, and if we go into the city we die there. That is the great reality. That is what Jonathan saw when he saw Goliath; there is death staring him in the face. He was first in the anxious state when he saw David go out to attack him. And when he saw Goliath on the ground, he is in the hopeful state; and when he saw David take the sword and cut of the giant’s head and hold it in his hand, he is in the assured state. Why should you not be as happy as Jonathan tonight? He could say— “I saw him do it; I saw it all done; and now I am not taken up with the giant, but with him that bath killed him.”
“If we sit here we die, and if we go into the city we die also.” Our state is truly deplorable. If there is any one, here that has not found that his state is deplorable, I don’t know how to picture it. It is like one on the edge of a precipice. A father seeing his child there would be almost afraid to touch him, lest he should fall over; but he shuts his eyes, and drags him back, and he is saved. People say you will make people terrified if you speak of death in that way. I would be delighted to see you in an agony of fear. It is the man that has the most desperate pain that has the most grateful sense of the relief that has been given him, And so it is in everything else. According to the measure of the pressure, must be the measure of the relief. That is what makes weakness among saints—they never had a real sense of their danger—of the judgment of God in all its terrors.
What drove man out of the garden of Eden was that he had a bad opinion of God and that is what has been the peculiar misery of the lost, when he awakes too late to find, I had a wrong opinion of the living God. You cannot have too great an opinion of God. You say, who will verify that opinion? Why, his own Son, He comes into this world to remove the terrible aspersion that has been thrown upon him in our hearts by Satan.
Now, what do those lepers do? They said there is no hope for us but in mercy—mercy where we have no reason to expect it. They are our enemies. There is no hope for us but in mercy. Have you ever dealt with God in that way, and approached Him saying, I have no hope but in your mercy. I have not the least more title to it than these four leprous men had from the Assyrians. Get mercy from their enemies! Did you ever hear of such a thing? Their case was deplorable. They had no back door. If they sat still they died; if they went into the city they died. There is no hope for them but mercy where they had no right to expect it. But they said, If we live, we live; if we die, we die; and they entered.
A terrible witness these leprous men will give against you, if you have not come to the gracious God, who has done everything good, and from whom cometh down every good and perfect gift, and who is the Father of lights, and who delights to let you know His mercy.
Well, now they venture, and what do they find? What every person will find that turns from his sins. The famine was all over, It is like the poor Philippian jailer. He cried for mercy. But there it was for him. The servants of God were there ready. What a trouble God was at to bring in this man. He was awake to the reality of his condition before God, and God saw. There is relief. The famine is over. “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.” The famine is over. Well, there is relief. The joy of believing was commensurate with, was in proportion to, the pressure.
You will see now what the extent of grace is. They came to the camp and they did eat and drink. There are two parts in grace which we get set forth in this scripture. First they get the grace, and then they are to go forth and be the proclaimers of it. Well, the first thing is they come in and eat and drink. The famine is over. A child can read this story. It is just a story to bring it plain to your conscience; to show how God delights in mercy. And transfer that now to the mighty transaction of the gospel, and you will find that you have to travel the same way. The great beauty of the Old Testament is that it shows us how the transaction goes.
We get the practical personality in the Old Testament.
If a man reads the New Testament exclusively he gets quite dry, If he reads the Old Testament only, he becomes quite legal. But if he reads them both together, he becomes personal.
Well, the first thing is they find the famine is over and the enemies gone. That is peace. The enemy is gone and peace is come, and the famine is over. That is the relief to a soul that has found Christ—a wonderful relief, but that is not all. They get a store. They get raiment, silver, and gold. He says, I don’t relieve a person for the present only, but I set him up.
Suppose I meet a friend, and I say to him, There is a friend of yours in the debtor’s prison. Well, he says, I will go there and get him out. Well, I meet him again in a few days, and he says, I have got him out. Well, I say, have you done anything else for him? No, I have not. Well, I say very likely that fellow is going about perhaps seeking for a situation in a poor wretched state. He may be miserable. That is what many believers are.
They have not got a fortune. While they can speak of being free of the fear of the famine, they do not give you the impression of people who are really delighting this moment in the happiness which God gives, and so satisfied with what God has done that they are not roaming about for something to make them happy. He completes the thing. The same grace that made them eat that food gives them the store. What right had they to that food, or to that gold, or to that silver. No right whatever. But they saw it, and whatever they saw they took. That is grace; “all things are yours.” What an astonishing thing I free from all my debts in the sight of God
Yes, the famine is over. What else? I have got an inconceivable fortune. I am not only clear of all the danger and all the misery that lay upon me, but I am rehabilitated in the most inconceivable circumstances. Just as if the friend should say, I gave him a fortune that he could never spend. Or put it in this way, I gave him such a fortune that the more he spent of it the more he would have of it. These men get a store. It was in the darkness: but when it comes to the break of day, they, say, we do not well, we must go and tell these tidings.
It is of immense importance for the soul to understand the greatness of the place that God wants to put us in. God wants not only to take your misery off you, but to give you this moment the most inconceivable happiness. I want your countenance to beam with the consciousness of possession. You are not fit to be an evangelist until you are conscious of possession. If we stop till the morning light, mischief will come upon us.
What had these men to tell? They had to tell this combination. Not only the famine is over but that they have a store. And so we are to go out to the world and say, I have a happiness that the world knows nothing of.
What a wonderful thing to go out to the world and say that we have got the Holy Ghost: it is in me a well of water springing up to everlasting life. Is that in heaven by and bye? No in the place of the misery, we ought to be in this way. As Christ said, Take up thy bed and walk, and go and tell thy friends what the Son of man hath done for thee.
These four lepers, if I look to their deplorable condition, they had nothing but to cast themselves upon the mercy of their enemies. The day of salvation had come. The light of it had shone. They find now, we have done nothing, we only take possession of what royal grace has provided. And as I said before, sight is right. All I wish to say in conclusion is this: How many of you can leave this meeting now and say, Thank God, thank God, I have seen the sight. I not only know the famine to be over and the enemies gone, but I see what the grace of God is; that it has not only relieved me of what is past, but it has given me in Christ inexhaustible resources. You see, beloved friends, it is impossible to explain the language of Scripture, because it is so beyond human comprehension. “You shall never thirst.” I think that believers ought to give such an impression to others that they will say, Well, I don’t see what you have, but you are the happiest man I know. And I believe, as I said before, and I thank God for it, there is nothing delights the heart of God so much as the simple fact of my perfect happiness in what He is to me—in what Christ is to me. This is what pleases the Lord. It will be far better not to be dissatisfied, but really to have a sense of what the favor of God is, and to say, what God is to me makes me feel perfectly happy—that will be more to Him, and He will value it more than any amount of sacrifice or devotion you can render. “This will please the Lord better than an ox or a bullock.”
The Lord grant in His mercy, that none of you may pass out of these doors without coming to the Lord Jesus as the one whom the Lord has sent into this world to relieve you of the misery and disease that are upon you, and to give you to experience what He says: — “He that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.” J. B. S.
Edinburgh, April, 1877.