THE POWER OF HIS RESURRECTION

THE POWER OF HIS RESURRECTION
CHAPTER 2

THE WATERS OF JERICHO

T. Austin-Sparks

2 Kings 2:19-22

While Elisha was at Jericho the men of the city came to him concerning the state of the waters, and the effect of that state upon all the fruit of the land, which was that it never came to maturity but fell before its time.

Before we consider Elisha's confrontation by this deputation of worried men we do well to consider the city's past history. It is necessary for us, in order to get the full significance and value of this incident, to pass our eye over the history of Jericho in relation to the Lord's people up to that time. The first encounter with Jericho on the part of the people of God was when they were about to take possession of the promised land.

Jericho represents the strength of the flesh as energised by spiritual forces. Jericho was a problem which was altogether beyond the power of man to deal with. When the spies returned with their report they gave their opinion that the task was quite beyond their powers. They had seen cities great and walled up to heaven and giants, their judgment being that this was more than flesh and blood could contend with, an impossible proposition. And they were quite right in a sense, but their trouble was that they did not leave room for the Lord.

When we read Romans 7 we find that the flesh is indeed too much for man himself to cope with. It seems to be energised by Satan and every attempt to overcome it only leads to despair. "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" This is the groaning cry of a man who is utterly unable to master his flesh. The whole of this section in Romans 7 discloses how the flesh is energised by an active law of sin and death. It is not a passive condition, but made worse by the extra factor of the forces of evil. So it is that the flesh has an uncanny way of trapping us, just at the moment when we least expect to be caught. It is not even flesh working automatically, but rather that which is strangely calculated to work against any values for God.

Closely associated with Jericho was the sin of Achan which expressed itself in two forms, the wedge of gold and the Babylonish garment. The wedge of gold appears to have been the form of currency used in that part of the world at that time. The gold had been claimed by Jehovah. When the city was taken, it was commanded that its gold should be devoted to the Lord. The gold was to be His property by right. Achan was therefore guilty of appropriating what belonged to the Lord, and seeking to turn it to his own account. This is what the flesh always does. It takes for itself the glory which rightly belongs to God. As to the Babylonish garment; that was a part of the whole system of things which needed to be utterly destroyed. It represented a foreign element which was a link with the Babylonish religion, a spiritual system and realm in antagonism to God, a worship energised by the god of this world usurping God's power and glory. The whole order needed to be utterly destroyed because of its denial that God is the only God. Achan sinned deeply in preserving it.

SO Jericho was typical of the whole land, both in its selfish hold on God's property and its false worship of another god. It is interesting to compare the seven nations greater than Israel (Acts 13:19) which had to be dispossessed, with the seven days in which the city had to be encompassed, and the seven circuits of the city on the seventh day. Since seven is the number of completeness, this suggests that Jericho gathered up in itself the significance of the whole land in its resistance to God's rights and worship.

Joshua cursed any attempt to rebuild Jericho, not out of any personal spite but in spiritual token of the fact that a divine veto, a curse, does rest on all the Satan-energised works of man. The reality of the curse reaches back to the garden of Eden at the beginning, and it holds good throughout all history. The features of the curse are an expression of the positive, evil activity of spiritual death. Far from being a mere cessation of existence, spiritual death works with tremendous activity, though it can never produce a result of lasting value. Here, for example, Elisha found a state of affairs where men laboured fruitlessly. They spent [36/37] themselves in the fields, cultivating, tending, working and watching for results, only to find that the promise of success and a harvest was never fully realised. Up to a point it was all right, but then there was total failure. This is just the nature of spiritual death. Paul called it 'vanity', and remarked that it is the inevitable outcome of what is done in the energy of the flesh. The works of the flesh can never reach the full measure of the purposes of God; they flatter only to deceive; they promise but can never fulfill. Even when such works are ostensibly done for God, the apparent success with which they may begin will only give way to disappointment and failure.



This mark of vanity seems to be typical of much that is nominally Christian. It seems to flourish for a time, but it has no lasting value for God. There may be considerable activity, organized and well-meaning efforts. Work may he done for God with the best of intentions; and yet the promised results turn out to be disappointingly temporary and evanescent. It is just as important for the Lord's people to realise that there is no possibility of lasting achievement on the level of the old creation, as it is for non-Christians to do so. This creation, says Paul, "was subjected to vanity", and there is no escape from this spiritual death element which is found in all the works of the flesh.

THE original victory over Jericho's power was by a work of faith. Round and round the Israelites went, day after day, with nothing seeming to be accomplished at all. On the seventh day they went round and round repeatedly, still with no sign of anything happening. Faith was being extended to the fullness of the seventh degree, and then it was expressed and given a voice in the presence of so much that seemed to make it nonsense. When faith reached that full culmination, however. God vindicated it with a mighty victory. This is what happened at Jericho in the beginning, and now Elisha had to fight the battle of faith all over again. We are to consider how he dealt with the challenging situation. We know that Elisha represented the power of resurrection, and it is therefore not surprising that he was destined to have much to do with death. This experience of Jericho was his first encounter with that great enemy.

We have already said that his roots were in Jordan, and in fact he had proved the reality of victory over death when he took the mantle of Elijah and smote the waters of Jordan, saying: "Where is the Lord God of Elijah?" The waters parted and he passed over, proving the power associated with his ascended lord and proceeding on his way to be -- as it were -- an Old Testament example of the resurrection victory of the cross.

He had received the anointing of the Spirit and was, in fact, the only recorded case of an anointed prophet. Anointing always brings authority for it indicates that God's own authority is committed to the anointed one. This explains what happened as Elisha later climbed up the road from Jericho and was ridiculed by a gang of hooligans. It is unfortunate that the A.V. tells us that they were little children who mocked him, saying: "Go up, thou baldhead". This was evidently a considerable band, for over forty of them were mauled by the bears. This large company of young men was scoffing at the idea of Elijah's ascension and were, in effect, suggesting that Elisha should justify his incredible assertion by showing them how it was done. We must not imagine that Elisha's rejoinder of cursing was a selfish outburst, but realise that he used judicial authority to express the judgment of God on rebellious blasphemers. As a matter of fact his action was the direct result of the anointing.

In a typical way, therefore, Elisha represented the new creation, and so it was logical that the remedy for Jericho's trouble should be conveyed to its source in a new cruse. The cruse itself was not the answer, but it became the means by which the divine remedy was communicated to Jericho's faulty waters. As we have said, this new creation's standing with God is based on its being founded on the cross, deriving its life from resurrection power and its authority from the anointing of the Holy Spirit. This is God's new cruse -- the new creation in Christ Jesus -- and it is the only answer to that rejected creation which is under a divine ban and subjected to vanity.

WHAT did the new cruse contain? Salt. Now salt is the symbol of that which is incorruptible, and which therefore stands against the challenge and domination of death. So it speaks to us of the resurrection life of the Lord Jesus offering a challenge to death and corruption. This was what Elisha brought to the source of the waters at Jericho. And it effected a lasting transformation.

We turn from this illuminating type, with its clear setting forth of the victory of resurrection life, to ask what is the spiritual interpretation and [37/38] application to ourselves. The answer is clearly seen in Romans 8:20-25, where we are given the spiritual background to the whole creation. The apostle points out to us that creation itself was subjected to vanity by a divine act. It seems that there was a time when God put a ban on the creation which resulted in fact that it can never realise its full end, except on one ground. Apart from this one remedy the creation is in the grip of that which makes impossible the realisation of the end for which it was originally intended. We are all involved in this situation. Our bodies are affected by it. We groan within ourselves, waiting for our adoption, that is the redemption of our bodies. Nevertheless the statement affirms that the creation was subjected to vanity in hope.. It is not entirely hopeless. But where is the hope? It is in the Lord Jesus -- the perfect fulfilment of the new cruse and the salt. So it was that He took the whole matter representatively in His own Person, entering as Man into its state, even to the point of bearing its curse. The very thorns with which He was crowned were symbols of the thorns and briars which sprang up immediately when God cursed the earth. So He died with that curse resting on His head, and to men it looked as though there could be no hope. Yet it is precisely through that death that hope has been brought in, for all the hope consists in the fact that God raised Him from the dead.

In the resurrection of the Lord Jesus we are delivered from the curse, that is from the working of vanity, and brought into the place where we can go right through to the divine end, the full realization of God's purpose. The fruit of life can endure and come to perfection now, because the power of death and the curse has been cancelled by the power of resurrection in Christ. The enemy is always trying to get children of God back on to a ground of condemnation, in order to obscure or reverse this testimony of Christ's resurrection, and to spoil the fruit of union between Him and believers. "There is ... no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus" (Romans 8:1) is of great importance. It is essential that the believer should be absolutely certain and settled in his faith position over this matter if he is to make real spiritual progress. The power of the enemy to spoil spiritual fruitfulness is destroyed for those who are truly rooted in the cross of the Lord Jesus, living in the power of His resurrection and united with Him by the Holy Spirit of anointing. The passage in Romans 8 goes on to declare that "the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death". This is the reality of that salt from the new cruse, the spiritual counterpart of a new element in life which replaces the frustration and vanity of the old creation by the lasting fruitfulness of the new creation in Christ Jesus.
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