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.
