Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 569
Delivered on Tuesday Evening, March 22, 1864, by the Rev. C. H. Spurgeon, at the Opening of Upton Chapel, Lambeth
2 Kings 13:19.
THAT deathbed scene speaks volumes for the power of holiness. Elisha was the Prophet of God—a man of no honorable station except that he is always honorable whom God calls to serve Him. Joash the king of Israel—who has often rejected Elisha’s admonitions and continued to worship in the groves of Baal though Elisha had denounced them and had proclaimed that Jehovah, alone, was their God. Now the Prophet is about to die at the good old age of ninety and Joash comes to weep at his bedside. It was something remarkable for the king to come there at all. Kings do not often visit deathbed scenes, especially the deathbeds of God’s servants!
But it was something more remarkable for that king to stand and look upon the decaying form of the aged Prophet and to weep over his face. More notable still was the language in which the king expressed his sense of the value of the Prophet to the State—“O my Father, my Father, the chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof.” He felt as if now all his strength was cut off. The king had trusted in his cavalry, though he had but a slender force, and he compares the Prophet to that which he looked upon as being the strongest arm of his military service. Or he looks upon the State now as being a chariot with wild horses and no stately Prophet to stand erect and hold the reins. Now have the reins dropped and where will the chariot go? It will soon be overturned and the mad coursers will drag it here and there. So the king, out of a sort of selfish respect for the Prophet—for it was respect and yet it was selfishness—stands and weeps over Elisha’s dying bed.
Dear Friends, let us seek to live so that even ungodly men may miss us when we are gone! It is possible for us in a quiet, unobtrusive manner to so adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in all things that when we die many shall say, “Let me die the death of the righteous and let my last end be like his.” And men shall drop a tear and close the shutters and be silent and solemn for an hour or two when they hear that the servant of the Lord is dead. They laughed at him while he lived, but they weep for him when he dies. They could despise him while he was here, but now that he is gone they say, “We could have better missed a less-known man, for he and such as he, are the pillars of the commonweal. They bring down showers of blessing upon us all.”
I would covet this earnestly as a gift, not for the honor and esteem of men, but for the honor and glory of God, that even the despisers of Christ may be compelled to see that there is a dignity, a respect about the walk of an upright man. Yet the scene at the deathbed of Elisha, fragrant as it is with the tribute of respect paid to the Prophet by an ungodly and unprincipled monarch, is memorable for the lessons then and there taught the king. And not less suggestive is it of profitable instructions to us. I propose, therefore, first of all to consider the significant sign. Then I want you to join with me in censuring the slack-handed king. After which we shall have no difficulty, I think, in unanimously justifying the righteous wrath of the Prophet.
I. VERY SIGNIFICANT WAS THE SIGN. Israel was at that time engaged in warfare against Syria. As a sign that God intended to give victory to His people, the king is bid to take the bow and arrows. Elisha, as God’s representative, puts his hand upon the king’s hands. The window is opened and the arrow is shot. As it flies through the air, the Prophet says that that arrow is the arrow of the Lord’s deliverance of His people out of the hand of Syria. The interpretation of this symbolic act is simple enough. God will save.
Deliverance is of the Lord but it must be accomplished by human instrumentality. Joash must take the bow and arrows, but the hands of Joash cannot make the arrow speed unless Elisha, the representative of God, puts his hands there. So the man, Divinely strengthened by God, shoots the arrow and the deliverance comes. Such, from the beginning of time even until now, has been God’s ordinary way of blessing His people and of gathering in His chosen. He works. The instrumentality is nothing without Him. He takes care to elect means which, from their very feebleness, convince the most skeptical that the power cannot be in the creature! While, at the same time He rarely effects any great thing for His people apart from human agency.
God, who created all things, is the Agent. But He uses the creatures as tools and weapons in the hand of the skillful and the mighty. He works in us to will and to do of His own good pleasure. It is His pleasure. It is He who works in us. But then it is for us to will and to do, because He works in us. Review the whole history of the Church as you find it in Scripture and you will see that this has ever been the fact. When God would save an elect company out of the mass of corruption grown, at last, too fetid for even His patience to endure, He saves the chosen eight—how? By a miracle?