The days, for instance, of Ahab king of Israel, king of the ten tribes, were fruitful in illustrations of this kind. There were in those days an Elijah and a Micaiah, a Jehoshaphat and an Obadiah, beside seven thousand who had not bowed the knee to the image of Baal; and all these in the midst of the foulest departure from the ways of God, the times of Jezebel and her abominations.
But all these are not to be classed together. To use the language of “woolen and linen,” or “garments of divers sorts” I might say, there was no mistaking the cloth of Elijah and Micaiah. The leathern girdle of the one, and the prison bands of the other tell us what men they were, and bespeak their complete separation.
The seven thousand we cannot speak of particularly; we know them only under the hand of God as “a remnant according to the election of grace,” and that, in an evil day, they “had not bowed the knee to the image of Baal.” But Obadiah was not Elijah, and again, as between him and Jehoshaphat, we are still to distinguish: such was the moral variety illustrated for our admonition in these days.
Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, of the house and lineage of David, was a separate man, but a man who, at times, and that too pretty largely, is found in defiling connection. He was of Jacob's generation, though it may be more faulty than Jacob in that generation. Vanity betrayed him again and again, as worldly policy betrayed the patriarch. Jehoshaphat joined affinity with Ahab. In the day of the battle, be put on the royal apparel; a garment sadly and shamefully of “divers sorts,” and it was near costing him his life, as the same clothing nearly cost Lot his life in the city of Sodom. He acted there in terrible inconsistency with the sanctity and separateness of the house of David. But though all this is so, I am not disposed to put Jehoshaphat in company with Lot. His life was not one of mixed principles; his garment was not advisedly wrought of “woolen and linen” together, though sadly and shamefully untrue to the testimony which became a son of David and a king in Jerusalem. Very noble deeds were done by his hands, and very dear affections were breathed by his spirit, and the God of his father owned him; but like Jacob, and to a more painful extent he was betrayed; he was betrayed into connections which make his testimony a very mixed, imperfect thing. It was not merely nature prevailing at times—that may be seen in all, in those of the best generation, in Abraham and in David. It was not merely a soiled garment whose blot is palpable, but a garment the texture of which is scarcely discernible, whether indeed it be of one sort, or a condemned garment of “woolen and linen:” so shamefully do the “divers sorts” appear in it at times, but not throughout.
But the garment which Obadiah wore in those days cannot be mistaken. It needs no close inspection to make out what it is. The “divers sorts” of woolen and linen are to be seen in it from head to foot. His life was of that texture. It was not that he was betrayed at times merely, nor was it that his way was stained at times, but his whole life evinces a man of mixed principles. He was a godly man, but his ways were not according to the energy of the Spirit in that day. He had respect to the afflictions of the prophets, hiding them in caves from the persecution, and feeding them there; but all the while he was the adviser, the companion, and the minister of king Ahab, in whose kingdom the iniquity was practiced. The “linen and woolen” thus formed the garment that he wore all his days. It was not the leathern girdle of Elijah; and, when they come together, this difference is preserved and expressed most strikingly. Obadiah is at some effort to conciliate the mind of Elijah. He reminds him of what he had done for the persecuted prophets of God in the day of their trouble, and tells him that he feared the Lord; but Elijah moves but slowly and coldly towards him. Painful all this between two saints of God; but it is far from being rarely experienced; it is a common thing I would say; but much more commonly felt than owned. (1 Kings 18)
There could have been no blending of time spirits of Abraham and Lot, after Lot took the way of his eye and of his heart, and continued in that direction—a citizen of Sodom. We are not told this, it is true, in the history; but we find from the history, as I observed before, that they never meet after that, and we may easily know why. Because such things are real and living things still. The Abrahams and the Lots of this day do not meet; or if they meet, it is not communion. They do not enjoy refreshment in the bowels of Christ. Abraham rescued Lot from the hands of the king Chedorlaomer, but this was no meeting of saints; they could not blend. And if the people of God cannot come together in character, they had better be asunder. In spirit they are already severed.
So was it, in a far more vivid expression of it, in Elijah and Obadiah. The man with the leathern girdle—God's stranger in the land in the days of Ahab—could not be found much in company with the governor of Ahab's house. But they meet in an evil day, a day which may remind us of the day of the valley of the slime pits, the day of Lot's captivity. Ahab his master had divided the land with Obadiah to search for water in the day of drought. The Lord his God had put the sword of His servant Elijah over the land to give it neither rain nor dew; and, in an hour of Obadiah's perplexity and of Elijah's commission under God, they meet.
The occasion is one of interest and meaning, and has lessons for our souls.
There is effort on the part of Obadiah and reserve with Elijah. This is naturally and necessarily so. Obadiah seeks to combine with Elijah, but Elijah resents the effort. Obadiah calls Elijah his lord, but Elijah reminds him that Ahab is his lord. For this will not do. We are not to be serving the world and going on in the course of it behind each other's back, and then, when we come together, assume that we meet as saints. This will not do; but the attempt to have it so is very natural, nay, it is very common to this hour. But Elijah acted in character, faithful to his brother now as he had been to his Lord before; and beautiful this is, and precious it ought to be whenever we get it. Obadiah had been walking with the world in Elijah's absence, and Elijah cannot let him now assume that he was one with him, though in his presence. Obadiah pleads, “What have I sinned,” says he, “that,” &c. But why this? Elijah had not accused him of sinning. Why this alarm and perturbation of spirit Elijah was not hazarding his life, or safety, or any of his interests; he was disturbing nothing that belonged to him. Why this alarm and taking refuge in the thought, or finding his plea in the fact that he had not sinned? It is a poor low state of soul when a saint has only the consciousness of this—that he has not sinned. Is that enough to enjoy the communion or understand the mind of an Elijah? Had not Obadiah been in Ahab's palace when Elijah was by the brook Cherith That is the question, and not the question whether he had sinned or not. Had Obadiah been with him over the barrel of meal or the cruse of oil? Elijah had not told him that he had been sinning; he need not shelter himself or commend himself thus. But Elijah cannot but let him know that their spirits were not blending; for they had met from different quarters. “Was it not told my lord what I did when Jezebel slew the prophets?” What was all this to the point? Elijah had not been going over his past history: it was better to leave the most of it untold; and it is a miserable thing for a saint of God to be trading after this manner on his character or his past ways. This is no title, no sufficient title, for the present communion of the saints, nor competency for it either.
And these are Obadiah's thoughts, and refuges, and pleadings, now that he is in the presence of a faithful witness of Christ. He had not sinned, and in days past he had done service. What a low sense of the common calling of the people of God the soul must have that can think it can be maintained, and that saints can go on together on such a title and competency as this! if the world be served when we are behind each other's back, though we may not have sinned, as people speak, and though we may have had character and done services in past days, we are not fit for each other's presence as saints of God.
Have we been in heaven or in Ahab's court? Have we been making provision for the flesh or desiring the things of Christ? There are other things than pleading “we have not sinned,” or trading on established character and past services. These are what alone fit us for the true communion of saints. Obadiah was governor over Ahab's house; how could such an one as Elijah be comfortable or at ease with him? He felt reserve, and he expressed it in manner if not in words. Obadiah is the man of words on the occasion—that was natural also, and is the ordinary style of such occasions or of such intercourses between Elijahs and Obadiahs to this hour. For indeed it is not communion when there is effort on the one side and reserve on the other. This is surely not the communion of saints. But it all has a voice in it and is common enough now-a-days. They were not in company with each other: that was the fact. Their spirits could not blend. The garment of divers sorts, of woolen and of linen, which a saint of God could not but wear in Ahab's court, ill-matched the leathern girdle of a separated suffering witness of Christ. We see this saint of God thus in his party colored dress but once; but this voice is thus full of holy, serious meaning to us. The poor widow of Zarephath, whom Elijah had lately left, enjoyed the full flow of Elijah's sympathies; and that humble, distant homestead, with its barrel of meal and its cruse of oil, had witnessed living communion between kindred spirits, and presented a scene which had its spring and its reward with God. But Elijah and Obadiah were not thus in company with each other. Elijah is too true to let Obadiah come near to him in spirit, or to answer the effort he was making to conciliate him.
There is character in all this, I am fully sure. Abraham and Lot never met, as we have said, after they parted on Lot's lifting up his eyes on the well-watered plains of Sodom. There was moral distance quite sufficient to keep them asunder, though a sabbath-day's journey might have brought them together. Very significant evidence that is! And so Elijah and Obadiah: their meeting was no meeting. As well might Abraham's rescue of Lot out of the hands of Chedorlaomer be called a meeting. This was not “the communion of saints.” This was not refreshment of bowels in the Lord. But all this repeats for the heart an oft-told tale.
Ebed-melech, in the days of another Elijah, was a man of this Obadiah generation, not however so strongly marked as his elder brother. Like him he loved the prophet of God, and in the face of an injurious and insulting court; and, hindered by the timid policy of the king, pleaded for Jeremiah and served him with gracious personal service. But he was not a witness as the prophet was. He was afraid of the Chaldean (Jer. 39:1717But I will deliver thee in that day, saith the Lord: and thou shalt not be given into the hand of the men of whom thou art afraid. (Jeremiah 39:17)), the sword of the Lord's anger, and such was not the condition of the Lord's witness. But his weakness was not despised in the rich grace of God. His measure received its measure again, and in the day of the judgment of the Lord, Ebed-melech gut his life for a prey, when Jeremiah was had in honor. Ebed-melech was saved then, but that was all; the prophet was rewarded.
Thus have we seen a generation in other days who, though the people of the Lord, show themselves sadly apart from the place to which the call of God would have led them. Such was Lot and such was Jonathan, and such were Obadiah and Ebed-melech. It was more or less double-mindedness in them, or love of the world in greater or smaller power in their souls. But such a generation is abundant to this hour. Saints are seen in situations and connections from which the call of God would separate them just as surely as it would have kept Lot out of Sodom. But this may be added with equal sureness in a multitude of cases—this impure connection arises from ignorance, or want of hearts instructed in the kingdom of God. They have not listened to the voice of the mysteries of the kingdom, but conferred with flesh and blood. They have not heard the Shepherd's voice calling them outside. They have not understood the Church as a heavenly stranger on the earth, and that connection—religious connection—with the world is Lot in Sodom, or an Israelite with a garment of “divers sorts of woolen and linen.”
The world is marked for judgment even more surely than Sodom was; ten righteous would have spared the cities of the plain, but nothing can cancel the judgment of “this present evil world.”
Here let me add, however, that the distinction of Lot and of Jonathan may be seen in many a soul now-a-days. Lot had nothing to sanction Sodom to him: all that he knew to be of God was outside; and even nature had no plea to plead for Sodom. Abraham and Sarah were outside, the witnesses of the call and presence of God, and his kindred in the flesh. All that was sacred in religion or nature were outside; and providences pleaded with him to the same end, for the plains of Sodom had already brought him into jeopardy of life and liberty, and warned him to dread the city. It was the world and nothing else that was heard in Lot's heart in favor of Sodom. But with Jonathan nature had a plea. All that was of God, it is true, was in that day outside Saul's court and camp; but the claims of kindred, the voice of nature, nay, the authority of nature were known and felt from within. The father and the family were there, though David and God were not.
And so now-a-days. There is many a thing that pleads from within. Nature, things moral and religious plead there; opportunities of service and testimony, obedience to authority, maintenance of order, the dangers and evil threatened to the social well-being, the peace of families, and example to children and servants—these things are pleaded, and they all come from within, and put in various claims for the course of the world.
But these and all such put together, can never speak to the saint, or plead with him with the authority of the call of God. If the Church be a heavenly stranger on the earth, alliance with the world defiles her, nay, ruins her as a witness for. God; and to defile after this manner, to seduce from the place of testimony, is the enemy's purpose, and has been so from the beginning. Was not the serpent in the garden seducing Adam from the place the Lord God had set him in? Nay, earlier even than that, are we not told about the angels that sinned, that they kept not their first estate?
So afterward with Israel, “ye are my witnesses,” says the Lord of them; but the enemy prevailed till the testimony was gone. “His house shall be called a house of prayer, but ye have made it a den of thieves.” Here were successful attempts of the enemy, to drag from the place in which God had set His witness. It is not merely that there was a soil, or a blemish, or a rupture, but a revolt, a departure, a yielding up to the enemy the great purpose or thought of God.
The contrary effect precisely, in the precisely like attempt, as has been observed by another, is seen in Jesus. “If thou be the Son of God,” said the tempter. His design was to lead Him to the abandonment of His place, His place of perfect and entire subjection which knows only God's will. But all was perfection and victory in Jesus, but in Jesus only, whether before Him or after Him; for the witness of this dispensation has been as corrupted as others. That which was set to be a heavenly stranger on earth, the companion of the rejected Christ, has faithlessly allied herself with the rejecting world; and what ruin can be more complete than this?
The “man of God,” who was deceived by the old prophet, would have had security in the divine principles, had his soul been alive to them. The word received, it is most sure, would have secured him; for it expressly forbade his eating and drinking in that place. But divine principles would have been his shelter also. The word he had received, when he set out on his journey, was founded upon them, as we may easily perceive. For how, I ask, could the Lord employ an unclean vessel? The old prophet had been clearly laid aside as unfit for the Master's use. He was dwelling in the very city where the Lord had a business to be done, but he was passed by. The Lord had gone down to Judah to get a witness against the altar at Bethel, though a saint of His own was living on the very spot. How could “the man of God” think that the Lord could employ the prophet of Bethel, as His vessel? He had already passed him by. He had already, after this manner, treated him as unfit for His use, according to the principles of His own house, that an unpurged vessel is not fit for service. (2 Tim. 2) How could the man from Judah be careless about all this? The word he had received was enough to tell him how this principle of God's honor was at that moment, so to speak, alive in God's thoughts, because he was enjoined neither to eat nor to drink in that unclean place, nor was he to return by the way that he came: so particular was the commandment in keeping him apart from all fellowship with that against which He was employing him to testify. And yet “the man of God” is beguiled to receive a message as from the Lord by the hand of one who was in contact and communion with the unclean thing, against which he has been brought all the way from Judah to testify! Strange forgetfulness! sad and shameful carelessness about the principles of the house of God. A saint as he was, and servant as he was, faithful too, in the face of the offers of a king—his carcass is not to come to the sepulcher of his fathers. (1 Kings 13)
When the eye is single the whole body is full of light. There is consistency and harmony in the action, when the moving principle is maintained single and unmixed Micaiah's action in 2 Chron. 18 was of such a nature, but Jehoshaphat's body was then anything but “full of light.” In the hour when he left Micaiah to go to the prison of the king of Israel while be himself accompanied that same king of Israel to the battle, who would have known him to be a saint of God? where was the body “full of light” then? It was the clouding and overcastting of all the illumination which he really partook of. There was no harmony, there was no pure and cloudless noonday, marking the pathway of Jehoshaphat then, no making of “his calling and election sure” as the apostle speaks. It is happy to follow that dear man a stage farther. (2 Chron. 20) For in the days of Ammon, Moab, and Mount Seir, Jehoshaphat's body is again “full of light.” He acts as a son of David ought to act, he seeks the Lord and the Lord only; and all is faith and victory and joy. But when in the earlier day Micaiah was sent to the prison of Ahab, and he himself went to the battle of Ahab, where was the son of David then? The whole body was full of darkness.
The captives, returned from Babylon to the land and city of their fathers, in like manner read us an instructive lesson on this subject of the garment of “divers sorts;” and their history affords both encouragement and warning. They do not refuse to accept the punishment of the nation's sin, and therefore, they take their place in subjection to the Gentile power whom God had set over them for their sins. They accept the favor of Cyrus, of Darius, and of Artaxerxes, in the spirit of the injunction “honor to whom honor, fear to whom fear.” They speak of a Gentile power as “the great and noble Asnapper,” and evidently feel grateful for the kindness shown to them by one of these powers after another, blessing God because of them, and ready-hearted, I am sure, to pray for the Life of the king and of his sons. But with all this they were a separated people. Their refusal of Samaritan connection was as earnest as their acceptance of the favors of the Gentiles.
The zeal, and revenge, and clearing of themselves of the mixed principle and of the abomination of bringing Greeks into the temple to pollute that holy place, was as simple and firm as it would have been in the days of Joshua or of David. They refused the garments of divers sorts. If they would have worn that livery, it might have saved them much trouble in the progress of the work of their hands, which was also the work of the Lord; but they could not and would not. The thing was not according to the ordinance; and they would not.
Paul might have saved himself a prison if he had accepted the testimony of the damsel at Philippi; but it was Samaritan help again, or something worse, and he could not; and the man who on that occasion refused the garment of woolen and linen, must, therefore, for his faithfulness, have his feet made fast in the stocks and wear prison bands. But all is right in the end, whether with Paul or the returned captives. Their God pleads their cause.
Here, however, some new and serious points of instruction on the matter of mixed principles occur. I feel I can pursue this with a sense of personal need and application. The further history of the captives from Babylon warns us as well as instructs us. They refuse the strange alliance, they will not wear the garment of divers sorts; but then they wear their own garments without a girdle—that is the moral of the story. They go to build their own houses when the Samaritan enmity stops their building of the Lord's. This is warning to us, as it was shame to them, and the Spirit of the Lord has to awaken them as from sleep and intoxication. They serve themselves when the service of the Lord was interrupted. Ease and indulgence and self-pleasing take the place which had now been left vacant. Haggai and Zechariah have to call them to the girding of their loins, and the trimming of their lamps. By no means do they send them back to make terms with the Samaritans. They do not tell them that they erred in refusing the garment of divers sorts; they only call on them to gird up the pure garments they were wearing—to do the Lord's work in the Lord's way, though Samaritans might again withstand them.
All this is full of meaning for us. The Spirit of God, let the exigency be what it may, will never have the saint in “woolen and linen;” but at the same time He would have the pure garment girded. An ungirded garment, though pure, is not after His mind; and often does He find that wanting, as in the days of Haggai and Zechariah, and this is our deep rebuke—a pure position kept with little spiritual grace.
The returned captives were in the right position. Their place was a better place than that of their brethren, who dwelt still in the distant cities of the uncircumcised, and they did well, as I have been saying, when they refused alliance with the Samaritans; such alliance would be but the wearing of garments of divers sorts, of “woolen and linen.” This they did not do, but those who stand such a trial, fail under another: Though they thus refuse to wear mixed clothing, their garments, as we have seen, were not girded, and even worse than that, they were sadly soiled and spotted. These returned Jews were doing much worse than their brethren who were off in the distant lands of the heathen. Their ways in the Holy Land were deeply rebuked by the ways of their brethren among the Gentiles.