(1 Kings 17:9-24, 2 Kings 4:8-37.)
It is a most profitable exercise for the heart to trace the varied effects of divine discipline, as exhibited in the history of the people of God. “Whatsoever things were written aforetime, were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.” (Rom. 15:4-5) It is so very encouraging to find, in the word of God, that He has, from the beginning, been dealing with “men of like passions’s with ourselves. For somehow, one is tempted, at times, to think there never was one, in all the ranks of God’s redeemed, like me. Hence it is that the Holy Ghost has, in perfect grace and wisdom, left on record such a variety of cases in which we may recognize, as it were, a full-length portrait of our very selves.
In the Sareptan and Shunamite we have two women who were honored of God in being allowed to entertain, successively, His prophets Elijah and Elisha. But they furnish two very different types of character. Indeed, they exhibit as striking a contrast in their spiritual history, as they do in their natural condition and circumstances.
In the first place, let us look at the Sareptan. “The word of the Lord came unto Elijah, saying, Arise, get thee to Zarephath, which belongeth to Zidon, and dwell there; behold I have commanded a widow woman there to sustain thee.” (1 Kings 17:8, 9.) This was a most remarkable command, whether we look at it in reference to Israel, to Elijah, or to the poor Gentile widow. As to Israel, it spoke volumes. The Lord’s prophet called to be a debtor to the ministrations of a Gentile! This was, truly, a striking commentary upon Israel’s condition. The bare reference to it, ages afterward, in the synagogue of Nazareth, cut the Jews to the heart, and filled them with wrath. (Luke 4) It told the double tale of their ruin, and of grace to the Gentiles. It pointed forward to a period when drought and sterility should prevail throughout the promised land, and the dayspring from on high should visit the Gentiles.
Then, as to the prophet, it was just an emptying from vessel to vessel. The ravens and the brook Cherith had been ministering to his need; but now he must pass into other circumstances, and be a debtor to a poor Gentile widow. And what were her resources? Hear her own piteous tale: “As the Lord thy God liveth, I have not a cake, but a handful of meal in a barrel, and a little oil in a cruse: and, behold, I am gathering two sticks, that I may go in and dress it for me and my son, that we may eat it, and die.” Gloomy enough in the judgment of nature! But faith looked beyond the almost empty barrel and exhausted cruse, to that liberal hand which was able to fill both the one and the other. Had Elijah been walking by the sight of his eyes, his heart would have utterly failed him at the prospect which met his view, “when he came to the gate of the city.” But he knew in whom he had believed, and was persuaded that the God of Israel could feed him, by the hand of a starving widow of the Gentiles, just as easily as by the instrumentality of ravens.
Finally, as to the Sareptan herself, she was in the very best possible position to prove the reality of that grace which was flowing beyond the enclosure of Israel, to reach to those who were “strangers and foreigners.” But, then, we find the blessing had to be forced upon her. She would rather not have had it. Her heart was not prepared to prize the holy dignity which was being conferred upon her. She would fain have put it from her. She had to be “compelled” to taste of the fullness of divine love and mercy. There was slowness of heart to commit herself to the truth of the promise. Alas! how like her are we!
How tardy are we to open our mouths wide! How unwilling to lean on the promise of God, because we know so little of the God of the promise!
But not only was she unwilling to be a recipient of divine grace, she was also unable to interpret the voice of divine judgment. “It came to pass, after these things, that the son of the woman, the mistress of the house, fell sick; and his sickness was so sore, that there was no breath left in him. And she said unto Elijah, What have I to do with thee, Ο thou man of God? Art thou come unto me to call my sin to remembrance, and to slay my son?” How little have we, here, of the dignity of a soul in communion with God! How little of the calm and holy subduedness of one passing through divine discipline, in the secret of the divine presence! “What have I to do with thee?” This question exhibits the impatience and fretfulness of unsubdued nature—terrible evils! Again, “Art thou come unto me to call my sin to remembrance?” All this argues a very low spiritual condition. The object of divine discipline can only be understood, in the light of the divine presence, and if that object be lost sight of, the soul is in danger of losing the “profit” which such discipline is designed to yield. “No chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous; nevertheless, afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness.” Unto whom? “Unto them which are exercised thereby.” (Heb. 12:2.) There is far more depth in the words “afterward” and “exercised” than the majority of us are aware of.
The Sareptan seemed to think there could be no other object, in the Lord’s dealings, than, to “bring her sin to remembrance.” Blessed be God, the believer is privileged to know that God “has cast all his sins behind His back”—that they are plunged in the waters of eternal forgetfulness. Hence, He can never do aught for the purpose of bringing sin to remembrance. His own peace-giving assurance is, “their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.” (Heb. 10:17.) Instead of seeing the sins of His people, God sees only the blood of His own dear Son which has blotted them out forever. If their sins could ever again come into God’s view, or into God’s remembrance, it could only argue that the blood of the cross was not sufficient to cancel them.
What, then, is the object of God’s discipline or chastisement? “That we might be partakers of his holiness.” (Heb. 12:10.) It is not for the remembrance of sins which He has promised to “remember no more.” Nor is it for the punishment of sins which were all judged in the Person of the Sin-bearer, on the cross. The object is stated to be, “That we might be partakers of His holiness.” And again, “When we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world.” (1 Cor. 11:32) Thus, it is neither to remember nor punish sin: it is that we should not be condemned with the world, but be partakers of the holiness of God.
It is well to be clear as to this, not only as it respects our own spiritual history, but also that we may avoid a habit which many fall into, of surmising evil in the case of any one who may be passing, in any way, under the rod. There are some who, the moment they see a Christian visited with chastening, judge, like the Sareptan, that it must needs be to “bring sin to remembrance.” This is a serious mistake which we ought carefully to guard against.
We may easily see from the effect of the discipline, in the case of the Sareptan, what was the object of it. She says, on receiving her son from the dead, “Now by this I know that thou art a man of God, and that the word of the Lord in thy mouth is truth.” (1 Kings 17:24.) It was to lead her into the knowledge of what she ought to have known, at a much earlier point in her career. How often is this the case with us! How much truth have we professed, which our souls never knew experimentally until we were brought into the deep waters of affliction, that we might be chastened, disciplined, and exercised, under the hand of “the Father of spirits.”
And, here, let me say, that the Shunamite began where the Sareptan left off. “It fell on a day, that Elisha passed to Shunem, where was a great woman; and she constrained him to eat bread. And so it was, that, as oft as he passed by, he turned in thither to eat bread. And she said unto her husband, “Behold now, I perceive that this is an holy man of God which passeth by us continually.” (2 Kings 4:8, 9.) She recognized, at once, by the exercise of a spiritual judgment, what the Sareptan had to be taught by a heavy affliction. In a word, we have in the Shunamite, a pupil higher up in the school of Christ than the Sareptan. Everything about her bears the stamp of advanced scholarship. She moves before the spiritual eye, with a dignity, an elevation, a moral grace, peculiar to those who breathe the air of the inner sanctuary. It is not, by any means, that the grace which visited “the great woman” of Shunem, was a whit brighter or richer than that which had reached “the widow woman” of Sarepta. Quite the contrary. The grace which could travel out to an alien of the Gentiles, was even richer than that which acted within the enclosures of Israel.
Furthermore, the difference in these two women was not merely a difference of circumstances. True, the Sareptan was a poor widow, who had to stand, with anxious mind and troubled heart, over a “handful of meal in a barrel, and a little oil in a cruse,” and from her thrifty plans, to make the trifle go as far as possible. Whereas, the Shunamite was “a great woman,” surrounded with abundance. Again, the prophet had to constrain the Sareptan to give him bread; the Shunamite had to constrain the prophet to take it. These, no doubt, are points of difference; but they are only circumstantial and not personal. The real difference lay not in the condition but in the communion; and this difference is apparent, in every movement of the Shunamite.
She has a want which neither “the king” nor “the captain of the host” can supply. She ardently longs to know the quickening power of the God of resurrection. She sighs to occupy the same ground with the Sarahs and the Hannahs of former generations. She desires to behold the Living God, traveling in the greatness of His strength and triumphing, in her case, over all the weakness and death of nature. She longs to bask in the very brightest beams of the divine glory—to have communion with the very highest truth—to tread the highest walks in the divine life.
Such were the aspirations of the Shunamite. She was not, like the Sareptan, contemplating death, standing at the other side of an exhausted barrel and cruse; she rather saw the God of resurrection, at the other side of nature’s death and barrenness. Her faith expected “great things” from the Living God, and she was not disappointed. She was allowed to “embrace a son.” She was permitted to experience, in her own person, “the power of resurrection.” With her, it was not the God of Providence filling the barrel, but the God of resurrection quickening the dead.
Then again, mark her, as she bows her head in the presence of the divine visitation. Instead of having, like the Sareptan, to go down into the depths to get her knowledge, she carries her knowledge into the depths, and, as a consequence, she gets deeper knowledge still. The Sareptan stood in the presence of death, knowing nothing of resurrection. The Shunamite, in the power of resurrection, was enabled to walk, as a conqueror, through the circumstances of death. (Comp. Phil. 3:10.) She was enabled to lay her dead son where she had, already, laid her dead body, even at the feet of the God of resurrection, who, she knew, could quicken the one as well as the other. Can anyone fail to see the difference? Alas! it is to be feared, that too many of us know but little of this. Too many of us are satisfied with the low ground of the Sareptan, instead of earnestly breathing after the elevated ground of the Shunamite. We count ourselves happy if we find the barrel and cruse replenished by a liberal Providence, and fail to seek after that deeper character of fellowship which flows from a view of God that raiseth the dead. Truly sweet are the providential mercies of our God; but surely there is something higher far than these. There is communion with Himself. And where is this to be tasted? At the other side of death. It does not need resurrection to replenish a barrel and cruse; but it does to quicken a dead body and raise a dead son.
Obviously, therefore, the Shunamite stood on loftier ground than the Sareptan. Subjects of grace they both were, assuredly, but though the subjects of the same grace, their communion was very different. To the Sareptan death was bringing her sin to remembrance. To the Shunamite, death was only furnishing a sphere in which the God of resurrection might show Himself. The Sareptan said to the man of God, “what have I to do with thee?” The Shunamite would not have “to do” with anyone else.
Thus much as to the difference between these honored women, when passing through similar circumstances. But, then, the Shunamite leaves the Sareptan far behind. The former was carried, by the pinions of a more vigorous faith, into regions which the latter could not reach. She moved in a far higher sphere of communion. The spiritual world has its spheres, as well as the natural or the social world; and the sphere in which we move will depend upon the measure of our communion; and our communion will be according to our faith. Now, the Shunamite seems to have moved in the very highest spiritual circle. Her knowledge of God and His ways was profound. She was in possession of a secret which she could not communicate, either to her husband, or to the official Gehazi. Neither the one nor the other could have understood her. She had shut the door upon her dead son, and turned her back upon the dark chamber of death, as much as to say that no one could or ought to enter there save the God of resurrection. She just wrote upon a check the amount of her need, and took it to Jehovah to sign it. Did He refuse? Did He complain of the amount? Oh! no; the faith of this noble woman was bringing Him into a scene where, above all others, the beams of His glory could shine in all their luster. He could fill a dark chamber with light, and a silent chamber with the accents of life. This was glorious work, and faith knew that God could do it. “It shall be well,” and “it is well,” said the Shunamite; for her whole soul was filled with the assurance that the beloved object which she had just left in the chamber of death, would be raised by the God of resurrection. And she was not disappointed. “Then she went in and fell at his feet, and bowed herself to the ground, and took up her son, and went out.” “When the God of resurrection had been there as an actor, she could go in as a worshipper.
Christian reader, let us learn from this Shunamite to seek a closer, deeper, more personal walk with God.