Elisha's ministry in Israel (i.e., the kingdom of the ten tribes) was full of blessing for that guilty people. God recognized that the responsibility for their low moral tone rested mainly with their kings. Not, indeed, that He held the people guiltless—far from it, as is shown in many of the prophets; yet they were destroyed for lack of knowledge, and, as with the more favored kingdom of Judah in a later day, their leaders caused them to err and destroyed the way of their paths (Isa. 3:1212As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths. (Isaiah 3:12)). It was so in Israel from the very commencement of their kingdom, so that the sin of “Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin,” was their ruin and their snare to the close of their national history. It was this which stood in the way of their blessing as a nation; there was not, from the very beginning of Israel's history, such a proper orthodox profession and recognition of Jehovah's name as He could acknowledge. Their links with God and channels of blessing were severed and gone, or at any rate, their streams were dried up or obstructed.
Their first king had started in independence and self-will, and had cast God behind his back (1 Kings 14:99But hast done evil above all that were before thee: for thou hast gone and made thee other gods, and molten images, to provoke me to anger, and hast cast me behind thy back: (1 Kings 14:9)). He was far too shrewd to attempt to govern the people without religion of some kind. He had so perverted and corrupted the whole economy that God's authority was lost, except indeed nominally, and the authority of the king became supreme in religious matters as in everything else.
Many a noted ruler, as Nebuchadnezzar or Napoleon, etc., has found out the same thing, viz., that it is far easier to rule with a humanized and corrupted religion than to do without it altogether; priests and prophets can always be made by royal decree!
Now it was God's purpose in raising up such an one as Elisha to bring blessing to His poor sinful people. But by what means? Where were the channels along which the blessing could flow? In giving up God, and His worship and service, they had lost everything worth having. The false religion might satisfy the king and apparently strengthen his authority, but no real blessing could by such means be ministered to the people. God often reminded them of what they had lost by their own folly, and would have had them consider their ways and return unto Himself—the source of all true blessing. And how many, like the prodigal, have been brought back that way! “And when he came to himself, he said, How many of my father's hired servants have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger. I will arise and go to my father.” God, in His knowledge of the human heart, counts upon this result being brought about within it, by the power of His Spirit. He sets Himself to meet the need of an awakened soul. He wounds that He may heal. He breaks that He may bind up the broken in heart. “He hath torn, and He will heal us.”
People, alas! get accustomed to the fruits of self-will and the poverty and limitations of man's condition as a fallen creature driven out from the presence of God, and do not consider that he was created innocent without the knowledge of evil. Some in their blind egotism and self-conceit would say the world is steadily improving, although God's word assures us it is under wrath, and that “evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived.” “Hath a nation changed their gods which are yet no gods? But my people have changed their glory for that which doth not profit. Be astonished, O ye heavens, at this, and be horribly afraid; be ye very desolate saith Jehovah. For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water” (Jer. 2:11-1311Hath a nation changed their gods, which are yet no gods? but my people have changed their glory for that which doth not profit. 12Be astonished, O ye heavens, at this, and be horribly afraid, be ye very desolate, saith the Lord. 13For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water. (Jeremiah 2:11‑13)). The self-satisfied condition of the people must be broken in upon; they must be awakened, and made to feel their poverty and the greatness of their loss.
The ministry of Elisha would not have been possible in Israel apart from that of Elijah who preceded him; and we may, therefore, glance at the state of things which led up to, and was in existence during, Elijah's testimony. What then do we find? From a worldly point of view, things apparently were not so bad, for national prosperity had increased. If God would only have left them alone, could they not have got on very well? Cities were built and restored, ivory palaces were constructed. But iniquity had woefully increased with the growth of self-indulgence and pride. God had been forgotten and His word despised. The spirit of infidelity was abroad. The curse of Joshua had been defied in Jericho's rebuilding, with the inevitable result that God's word had been fulfilled to the letter (1 Kings 16:3434In his days did Hiel the Beth-elite build Jericho: he laid the foundation thereof in Abiram his firstborn, and set up the gates thereof in his youngest son Segub, according to the word of the Lord, which he spake by Joshua the son of Nun. (1 Kings 16:34)). The exceedingly corrupt form of worship originated by the son of Nebat did not now satisfy the renegade king of Israel. The worship of Baal had been introduced into Israel, borrowed from the Phoenicians, and had become readily popular among the Israelites, who were ever eager for something new. One feature of iniquity had been succeeded by another, until it became evident that something must be done if the people were to continue any longer in the land. The spirit of infidelity and the unclean spirit of idolatry must be held in check, and God's authority publicly vindicated. We know not how long Elijah had fasted, and prayed, and mourned over the distressing state of things in Israel, nor was he alone. God had numbered and separated unto Himself a select, complete, and holy remnant who were not to be corrupted by the idolatrous tendencies of the day in which they lived. Yet the existence of this secret, godly remnant, known only to Jehovah, had apparently no effect outwardly upon the nation's history, nor did it call forth any public intervention of God on their behalf. It might well be that such an intervention should be in answer to long and earnest prayer in secret, but there must be a basis known to all upon which their national prosperity and blessing could rest. The influences at work in England in the sixteenth century, which directly led up to the Reformation, were many of them very corrupt in themselves. Nevertheless, the subsequent greatness and advancement of the nation might be distinctly traceable to the cessation of religious persecution and the national acknowledgment of the liberty and responsibility of every individual to read the Bible for himself. God is righteous in His government of the world, and attaches great importance to acts and professions made by kings or rulers that might count for little or nothing to the credit of the individual. These acts affect earthly things alone, and do not at all determine one's eternal salvation, which must ever rest upon divine and sovereign grace, and the work of Christ, and must be individually appropriated in saving faith, if the soul is to be blessed for eternity.
So in Elijah's time there can be no reason to doubt that the national conscience was touched, and that the hearts of the people, sorely grieved and humbled by the long-continued drought, were turned back again to the Lord God of their fathers. The public confession of Jehovah's name, little as it might have been worth to those who joined in it” Jehovah, He is the God; Jehovah, He is the God” (1 Kings 18:3939And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces: and they said, The Lord, he is the God; the Lord, he is the God. (1 Kings 18:39))—made it possible for God to bless them, not only in His sending upon the long-famished land the rain so greatly needed by man and beast, but also in the raising up of Elijah's successor as a special witness of grace following judgment, for Jehovah delighteth in mercy to His people, as shall indeed be openly and fully testified in the coming day of Israel's repentance.
(To be continued.)