In the Second Book of Kings, chapter 6:
And the sons of the prophets said unto Elisha, Behold now, the place where we dwell before thee is too strait for us.
Let us go, we pray thee, unto Jordan, and take thence every man a beam, and let us make us a place there, where we may dwell. And he answered, Go ye.
And one said, Be content, I pray thee, and go with thy servants. And he answered, I will go.
So he went with them. And when they came to Jordan, they cut down wood.
But as one was felling a beam, the axe head fell into the water: and he cried, and said, Alas, my master! for it was borrowed.
And the man of God said, Where fell it? And he showed him the place. And he cut down a stick, and cast it in thither; and the iron did swim.
Therefore said he, Take it up to thee. So he put out his hand, and took it.
I confess that I used to wonder why that story was included among the acts of Elisha. Very interesting, and of course quite wonderful; but what is its lesson? What has it to say?
In thinking about it, several things have become quite clear to me. I would like to pass on just one or two of them this morning.
Of course, this, with all the other things recorded concerning the acts of Elisha, is included in the great beginning of his life. You recall that, as his master Elijah was about to be taken up to heaven, he asked Elisha what he might give him. Elisha said, “A double portion of thy spirit”—literally, the portion of the firstborn.
Elijah said, “Thou hast asked a hard thing: nevertheless, if thou see me when I am taken from thee, it shall be so.” As they passed through the Jordan onto the other side, the chariots of the Lord caught up Elijah. Elisha cried, “My father, my father, the chariots of Israel, and the horsemen thereof!” The mantle fell from Elijah, and Elisha took it up.
The sons of the prophets, who come into view at that point and are mentioned so many times in this book, cried, “The spirit of Elijah doth rest on Elisha,” and they bowed themselves to the ground.
Now, that is where it all begins. These various stories—these marvelous works of power—are the expression and outcome of that mighty anointing with the Spirit, that portion of the firstborn.
So, what we have here, in every one of these incidents and especially in the one of which we are thinking this morning, is the real work of the anointing: the Holy Spirit operating in the power of resurrection. Every incident, as you notice, bears that stamp in some way or another. In some form or another, it is the mighty working of resurrection power by the anointing of the Holy Spirit.
It would be easy—and we have done it before, so we will not take the time to repeat it this morning—to show how this is but a foreshadowing of the ascension, the receiving up of the Lord Jesus, whereupon the Holy Spirit descended upon the church. The mantle, the portion of the firstborn, fell upon the church.
If we want to know what the portion of the firstborn is, it is just this: the power of His resurrection.
Seeing that, let us come to this story. The sons of the prophets are again in view, and note what they represent. They represent the generation succeeding, following on, to carry forward the prophetic testimony: the next generation, sons of the prophets.
The heart of this whole matter, where they appear again and again in relation to these mighty acts of the Spirit through Elisha, is this: these sons of the prophets, who were in the schools of the prophets, were being educated and trained to carry on the work of the prophets, to fulfil their ministry in the next generation.
They were not just academic students. They were being brought, by these various ways, into the closest touch with reality.
You will at once see how true that was in the case of this man and his axe head. These sons of the prophets expressed quite a legitimate ambition or desire when they said, “The place where we dwell is too strait for us.” They said, in effect, “Let us have enlargement.”
That was a perfectly legitimate ambition or desire—a right thing. There was nothing wrong with desiring to escape limitations, and to enlarge and expand for the work of the Lord. That is quite a good thing and quite a right thing.
So Elisha raised no objection and put no difficulty in the way, but encouraged them. When some of them said to him, “Look here, we are not just going on with this without you. We are not discarding the old generation. You come with us. We need you,” he said, “I will go.”
There was a rightness in this whole matter, quite rightly so. But even with a perfectly legitimate design, ambition, and quest—with which there is no objection at all—the thing has got to be kept very close to life.
That is what this story is about.
Among the various lessons that it teaches, there are just two that I will point out this morning.
In our going on, in our desire to go on, in our quest for enlargement and increase and escape from anything small, narrow, strait, or limited, all that is employed in the work of the Lord must be firsthand. It cannot be done with borrowed tools.
There are many ways in which the testimony can be secondhand. It may be true of children brought up in it, in their home.
I wonder if I might refer to such an occasion in our own midst several years ago. Our brother Patterson was taken so suddenly to the Lord. His son John, who was with us at conference time recently, passed into a very difficult phase.
He came to see me. He said, “I am having a very difficult time. I have discovered that I have been living on my father’s testimony. I have just taken what he said and followed him, thinking that I was on the same ground as he. I discovered that it was his and not mine, and I have got to find it all for myself right from the beginning.”
It was a difficult passage, but he came through, of course, and is on his own ground. It was a borrowed axe.
We may get it from our meetings, from teaching we have received over years. We have got it in our hand, and then we imagine that we are going to use it in some way, and that it is going to be a serviceable thing. Then something happens. We find it does not work. The head comes off.
It just comes off and lets us down. This is not ours after all; it was a borrowed one. It was not ours; it was someone else’s. It was the fellowship, the meeting, or the teachers.
In various other ways, it can be something borrowed from the study, the library, and the bookshelves—the commentaries, the translations, and all the authorities, the godly men who have written. We have got it, we think; and it does not work. The head comes off.
Alas, it was borrowed.
Now, the Lord allows these incidents—if you like, these accidents; there are no accidents at all—these things to happen, where the whole thing seems to let us down. It does not seem as though it is working. He does that.
A crisis arises, such as arose with this man and his axe, in order that the things should pass through death onto resurrection ground and become ours in the power of resurrection.
When the whole head has come off, we are left just with a shaft in our hand, which will not fell down any trees at all and will not accomplish anything. Left like that, standing, it is a painful hour, a painful time. We feel that perhaps we have been on the wrong ground. We have been in some kind of illusion.
Well, maybe the Lord is very faithful. Such experiences, which seem to be like disaster and make us cry, “Alas, alas!” are in the very faithfulness of God to bring that thing onto new ground, where it is ours by a miracle of God.
It is ours because the power of His resurrection has come in. When that has come in, it is no longer a borrowed one; it is yours.
I am quite sure you see more than is necessary for me to say. No, dear friends, the very faithfulness of God necessitates, on the one side, the loss of the axe head sometimes. It leaves us standing, crying, “Alas!”
All our power to do things has flown; it is gone, it is transient. On the other side, there is always the positive purpose of God in such experiences.
We shall know this portion of the firstborn. You get the firstborn portion, you know. If you like to go back to the Book of Deuteronomy, you will see what that is and where that arose. The portion of the firstborn is something which secures the inheritance to the individual concerned. It is not something thought out, paid for, and then a gift of grace.
The portion of the firstborn is knowing the anointing in truth.
We will all agree—every one of us here this morning will agree, at least with the theory, with the statement—that we do not want borrowed experiences, teaching, secondhand addresses, or studied-up things. We want people who know and can speak out of a deep experience.
They have been through the depths of Jordan. They have been into death and have come onto resurrection ground. They know it by the bitterness on the one side—loss, failure, disappointment—and on the other side, the wonderful strength of this miracle of resurrection life.
We want sons of the prophets who are in the good of the anointing, not just students of it.
Well, that is the first lesson. Simple it is, but it explains a lot, I think, of the Lord’s ways with us. Everything has got to be established on the ground of a living, personal experience—not somebody else’s, but our own.
The other thing which goes with it, of course, clearly is that in this miracle of resurrection there was a complete and categorical reversal of the natural order.
It is the nature of a piece of iron to sink. That is native; it will sink. For a piece of iron, a lump of iron, an axe head, to float is contrary to nature.
I only need hint at that; you see much more than I need say. Dear friends, by nature we are all bits of iron. Let me put that another way: I mean, we are of the sinking kind.
We know that. It wants very little to push us under, to put us down; it is in us.
In this case, there was a spiritual demand at hand. Here was the whole matter of enlargement, expansion, and increase in the work of the Lord. I wonder if you have noticed that whenever something more of the Lord is in view, how quickly we get down. We get pressed under.
I have noticed that it happens. It just happens. With something of the Lord just coming on, you will find people under things. They have gone down. They have been caught in some way, and they have sunk.
We have to really gird ourselves for anything that the Lord is going to do. It just does not happen. Well, we are made like that. Naturally, we are of the sinking kind.
Perhaps you may think that you are a very buoyant person. I venture to suggest that the most buoyant person in this place this morning, with the most buoyant and optimistic natural makeup, coming right up against the forces that are set against the things of God, will find that they need more than natural buoyancy.
We are not going to swim, to float, to stay on top, without something more than our own strength of nature, our own constitution.
The wonder of the anointing—let us say it quickly in closing—the wonder of the Holy Spirit, the wonder of the portion of the firstborn, is this: although we are so sinkable, we are such sinkable stuff naturally. It is decline; it is the dropping down under pressure, under trial.
The marvel is that you and I are afloat today. It is a marvelous thing that we are afloat today.
Many of you know that. Perhaps you think that you have sunk many times, but you are afloat today. Your heart may be sinking today, you think, but you are not drowned yet. You are not at the bottom yet. You are not lost for good yet. We have all been there many times.
You can say with the psalmist, “Though I fall, yet shall I rise.” There is some extra factor in the child of God and in the servant of God, called according to His purpose, that causes us to survive a thousand drownings: the power of His resurrection.
The wonderful thing in this simple little story is that it says to us: if the Holy Spirit is in us, there is a reversal of the way of nature.
Nature declines. Nature goes down. Nature sinks. But here the Spirit is always reversing that and causing us to rise, to rise, to go on again and again. It is like that because there is something different from nature in us: it is the divine nature, the power of His resurrection.
So the word—the simple message—is this: we must be on true ground. Everything must be true and real, not borrowed and secondhand.
You can do nothing really effective with tools that are not a part of your own being, wrought into your own experience, which you can say, “Now, this truly is mine. I have been through death with this. This has brought me into life. This is mine, this is mine—not something that I have heard, not something I have got from someone else. I have this because I have gone through it with God on this matter.”
It must be like that to carry the testimony on—the prophetic testimony.
Then there is this great assurance, this wonderful assurance: we have the Holy Spirit. If we are the Lord’s, we have the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwelling in us. That is something not only more than nature, but contrary to nature.
There are times when we may feel we are going to the bottom. We may feel we have touched bottom. But we are going to come up again if that Spirit is in us. The Holy Spirit is not going to die in the grave.
But if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwelleth in you,
He that raised up Christ Jesus from the dead shall give life also to your mortal bodies
through His Spirit that dwelleth in you.
Your body of death—I can say it again—the power of His resurrection. And the iron, the iron did swim.