And Elisha came again to Gilgal. And there was a dearth in the land; and the sons of the prophets were sitting before him:
and he said unto his servant, Set on the great pot, and seethe pottage for the sons of the prophets.
And one went out into the field to gather herbs, and found a wild vine, and gathered thereof wild gourds his lap full, and came and shred them into the pot of pottage: for they knew them not.
So they poured out for the men to eat. And it came to pass, as they were eating of the pottage, that they cried out, and said, O man of God, there is death in the pot. And they could not eat thereof.
But he said, Then bring meal. And he cast it into the pot; and he said, Pour out for the people, that they may eat. And there was no harm in the pot.
You will recognize this as one of the many recorded incidents in the life of the prophet Elisha, subsequent to his receiving the mantle of Elijah and the double portion of his spirit.
Every one of these incidents is a part of a whole, and the whole is the testimony of life overcoming death.
This brief story has several features which we will note, and I think we shall find in them something true to all the Word of God—something of abiding meaning.
We begin by noting, again, that it is related to the sons of the prophets. They were those schools of the prophets, founded for the training and educating of men who were to succeed them and carry on the testimony of the Lord, becoming responsible people in that testimony.
It is necessary to keep that connection in mind, because it has something to say to us. There is a sense in which we are all in the Lord’s school for training in the matter of spiritual responsibility in His testimony.
Indeed, we can say that that is the explanation of all His dealings with us, and of the strange happenings which He allows in our lives. It is education—spiritual training—unto responsibility in His testimony.
The Lord has no place for irresponsible people, people who carry no responsibility. That is the connection.
Then there was a dearth in the land: a time of strictness, a time of pressure, a time when things were anything but easy.
And all such times are perilous times.
A time of pressure, a time of adversity, a time of difficulty and strictness, when things are hard—that is a perilous time in this sense: that we are very often found governed by the necessity of the time, and we yield to the pressure of circumstances.
We do something, or try to do something.
We have been occupied with Abraham on our Thursday evenings. The situation was a very difficult one for Abraham—indeed, humanly impossible. And he yielded to the pressure of circumstances, or of what seemed to be a necessity, and took action.
We know the terrible result of that in Ishmael. We have quite a number of such instances in the Bible.
And I cannot help but note that our Lord Jesus did not escape this temptation. Oh, there is no doubt that the temptation of the devil in the wilderness was for Him to act under the pressure of necessity.
He hungered after forty days and forty nights of fasting, and the devil came and said:
Command these stones that they become bread.
If You do not, You die. It is necessary for You to do something. The circumstances demand that You do something.
It is always a perilous time to be under pressure.
The time of adversity—this was a time of dearth—and so they must do something. They go out to do it, and you see what happens.
It is a part of the whole story. It is only a part; it leads on to the very blessed sequel.
But the next feature is this inadvertent error, this mistake. One gathered this wild vine. It says that they knew it not.
Under pressure, doing something, and inadvertently making a mistake which involves, in real peril, the whole life itself.
Out there in that world, the curse was lurking secretly. But all vile things and poisonous things came from that initial curse, when God said:
Cursed is the ground because of thee.
The curse was lurking, as it always is. That curse, which has in it the very element of death—it is there, and we are not always able to detect it or identify it. It is in the world everywhere, lying in wait for men to act inadvertently, or by the sheer force of seeming necessity for their very life.
A trap waiting.
You notice that this inadvertent error, this mistake, not only involved the one who gathered the vine; it involved all those who were in relation with the testimony.
The enemy is very subtle. He can only just drive one child of God, one servant of God, along this line and entangle him or her. You know, this is a communal pot; it is not an isolated thing. He has others in view.
And they were all involved in this mistake.
The result? The touch of death. Evidently, they drew out and tasted, and detected that there was something poisonous.
The touch of death, because that is the point of the whole story—and of all these stories, you see: death in some form or another, abounding; the work of the curse.
But then, the end. This is where the message turns from being one of warning, perhaps not very helpful although enlightening, and becomes, I think, tremendously helpful.
When they recognized their mistake, recognizing that they had become involved in something evil quite unintentionally, what had happened? They had acted under pressure, under seeming necessity. They made a mistake.
And I suggest, dear friends, that there are not many of us here today who, looking back over our lives, are unable to see more than one occasion when it was like that with us.
We were driven. We were harassed, perhaps distraught, pressed out of measure. We felt that we must do something, and we did something on that ground—and we regret it to this day.
Others, too, may have been involved. But it is a very real-life story, this is.
But that is not the message. It may be a warning; it may be enlightening. But the message comes at the end.
They cried out, “O man of God, there is death in the pot.” And he said, “Then bring meal.” He cast it into the pot. They drew out, and there was no evil thing.
What is the message? I hope I am not reading something into this, but if the rest of the story is true, the principle, I think, is true.
We have to go back to the Book of Leviticus for the real clue to this issue, and find it in the second chapter—those chapters dealing with the various offerings brought to the Lord by His people.
All are pictures, you know, related to the one thing: life with God.
In the second chapter of Leviticus, at the beginning, we have the meal offering. The meal offering, we know, is a type of Christ.
It is composed of fine flour, oil, frankincense, and salt. I am not going to stay with all that; simply to sum up its inclusive meaning: fine flour, ground very fine; bread corn bruised.
Well, this meal offering quite clearly is a figure of the incorruptible humanity of the Lord Jesus: a human life without corruption in it, without poison in it, without a harmful element in it, without any element of the curse or of death.
His perfect humanity, under the anointing of the Holy Spirit, with the frankincense mingled, making it a sweet-savour offering.
As distinct from the other offerings, the whole burnt offering was Him. They were not sweet-savour offerings; they were offerings of judgment. But the meal offering was a sweet-savour offering. The frankincense made it that, and the mingled salt eliminated any possibility of corruption.
And then, baked in the fire—tested, perfected through the fires of suffering—He presented Himself to God as a Man to satisfy the heart of God: incorruptible humanity.
See the connection?
You and I, in our human frailty, our human folly, and in the corruption that is in our natures and in our hearts, do many foolish things and involve ourselves and others in a great deal of trouble. We bring something very much like death very near.
But this is not done by calculation, deliberately, in rebellion. So many of these things in our lives are inadvertent, unpremeditated. We just get caught in them under pressure.
There are consequences, of course—very serious consequences. What are we to do? Is it hopeless? Is there no way out? Cannot our human failures, follies, and weaknesses be retrieved? Must that be the end? Is it death because we have made a mistake, however grave it is?
God has provided His answer for all human inadvertency, all unintentional sin or mistakes. He has His answer in a perfect humanity—in His Son—an offering to Himself that satisfies Him for all your and my mistakes.
Now, in the great provision under the law, there occurs this very phrase: “If a man sin unwittingly.” Then there is a provision, is there not?
This man went out to the field, gathered what was there, and unwittingly—having no thought of bringing back poison to poison all his fellow students—did so not knowing what this thing was.
Perhaps it was part of his education that he had to learn the difference between things that are good and bad. Undoubtedly, he did that day.
We do learn in this hard school of mistakes. If we cannot learn by our mistakes, well then, we are pretty hopeless.
No doubt he learned a very big lesson that day by his error of judgment, and by acting without sufficient thought, consideration, and prayer—impulsively, like Saul did and lost his kingdom.
But he learned his lesson, this man—no doubt about it.
The great thing, I am quite sure, that remained in his heart was this: “I made a terrible mistake. I have been responsible for an awful blunder. I nearly involved not only myself, but others, in disaster.”
“But the Lord has made a provision to meet all my foolishness, all my ignorance, all my unintentional wrong.”
Christ meets our need in that way. I think there is a lot of comfort in that, do you not?
The whole question is the question of death through corruption, and it is still true of us. In us—that is, in our flesh—dwelleth no good thing. We are still very corrupt. Our heart is desperately wicked, desperately weak.
But the Lord has provided. He is greater than our heart. It is one more aspect of our appreciation of the Lord Jesus.
I trust that this comes to you, as it does to me, with some real helpfulness. You often look back over your life and say, “Oh, if only, if only I had not done that.”
Of course, perhaps some of you people have no regrets about your life at all. There is not a thing that you can look back upon with regret. Well, behold the perfect man.
But most of us are not like that. We are aware that there are many things we wish had never been, that we had never done. If only we had had the light then that we have now, we should never have done them. But they are done.
What do we do about it? Is it hopeless?
The Lord has taken the full measure of human frailty and met it with an answer in His Son—an answer for human foolishness.
We may have to meet the Lord in another way if it is rebellion, if it is deliberate. But most of us can truly say to the Lord, “We would not have done that had we known, had we understood. It was not intentional. It was not deliberate. It was not rebellion. It was just inadvertent, under pressure.”
And I realize, dear friends, that this is a limited message. It can only apply to some situations.
You want to take all these incidents in the life of Elisha to get the whole range of the Lord’s provision. It would be for Naaman, or the woman and her son, or whatever it may be.
Here is one point in the whole story of a wonderful provision in the Lord Jesus to meet us where we have got into trouble by our own foolishness, our own weakness: a meal offering of a perfect humanity that satisfies God.