To read a very familiar portion of the
word from the second chapter of the book
of the Kings, the second book of the
Kings, the second chapter, and
it came to pass, when the Lord would
take up Elijah by a whirlwind into heaven,
that Elijah went with Elisha from Gilgal, and
Elijah said unto Elisha, Tarry here, I pray
thee, for the Lord hath sent me as
far as Bethel.
And Elisha said, As the Lord liveth, and
as thy soul liveth, I will not leave
thee.
So they went down to Bethel.
The sons of the prophets that were of
Bethel came forth to Elisha, and said unto
him, Knowest thou that the Lord will take
away thy master from thy head today?
And he said, Yea, I know it.
Hold ye your peace.
And Elijah said unto Elisha, Tarry here, I
pray thee.
The Lord hath sent me to Jericho.
And he said, As the Lord liveth, and
as thy soul liveth, I will not leave
thee.
So they came to Jericho.
The sons of the prophets that were of
Jericho came near to Elisha, and said unto
him, Knowest thou that the Lord will take
away thy master from thy head today?
And he answered, Yea, I know it.
Hold ye your peace.
Elijah said unto him, Tarry ye here, Tarry
here, I pray thee.
For the Lord hath sent me to Jordan.
And he said, As the Lord liveth, and
as thy soul liveth, I will not leave
thee.
And they too went on.
Fifty men of the sons of the prophets
went and stood over against them afar off.
And they too stood by Jordan.
And Elijah took his mantle, and wrapped it
together, and smote the waters.
And they were divided hither and thither, so
that they too went over on dry ground.
Came to pass, when they were gone over,
that Elijah said unto Elisha, Ask what I
shall do for thee, before I be taken
from thee.
Elisha said, I pray thee, let a double
portion of thy spirit be upon me.
And he said, Thou hast asked a hard
thing.
Nevertheless, if thou see me when I am
taken from thee, it shall be so unto
thee.
But if not, it shall not be so.
Came to pass, as they still went on,
and talked, that, behold, there appeared a chariot
of fire, and horses of fire, which parted
them both asunder.
Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven.
Elijah saw it, and he cried, My father,
my father, the chariots of Israel, and the
horsemen thereof.
He saw him no more, took his whole
of his own clothes, and ripped them in
two pieces.
He took up also the mantle of Elijah,
that fell from him, and went back, and
stood by the bank of the Jordan.
And he took the mantle of Elijah, that
fell from him, and smote the waters, and
said, Where is the Lord, the God of
Elijah?
And when he also had smitten the waters,
they were divided hither and thither, and Elijah
went over.
And when the sons of the prophets, which
were at Jericho, over against him, saw him,
they said, Spirit of Elijah, doth rest on
Elijah.
They came to meet him, and bowed themselves
to the ground before him.
Turn to the Gospel by Matthew, chapter 11,
11 and verse 2.
When John heard in the prison the works
of the Christ, he sent by his disciples,
and said unto him, Art thou he that
cometh, or look we for another?
Jesus answered and said unto them, Go your
way and tell John the things which ye
do hear and see.
Blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the
lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead
are raised up, and the poor have good
tidings.
Preach to them.
And blessed is he whosoever shall find none
occasion of stumbling in me.
In the letter to the Hebrews, chapter 10.
Chapter 10, the letter to the Hebrews, at
verse 35.
Cast not away, therefore, your oldness, which hath
great recompense of reward.
For ye have need of patience, that having
done the will of God, ye may receive
the promise.
To revert to the old version of Matthew
11, 6.
Blessed is he who shall not be offended
in me.
The blessedness of the unoffended.
You will know that the word there, offend
or offended, so frequently used in different connections
in the New Testament, just means a stumbling
block.
Literally, blessed is he who will not find
me to be a stumbling block.
Or who will not stumble at me.
Changed into the word boldness in the Revised,
and we shall see why in a moment
or two.
The first thing then to take note of
is that the word of God does take
account of the possibility of our being offended
with Him.
It does not say anywhere that that possibility
should never arise and will never arise.
The Lord has nowhere said that we shall
never have any occasion for being offended with
Him.
He has indicated that there will be plenty
of opportunity for so stumbling at Him, falling
over Him, coming down because of Him.
If you like, crashing because of Him will
be plenty of occasion or opportunity for so
doing.
He has never said it will never be
so.
It is well for us to recognize that
temptation is never sin.
We all are tempted in this as in
many other ways.
And as you know, temptation is only another
word for trial.
So it is translated in some places trial.
And there is nothing wrong with trial, with
being tried.
If you like, with being tempted.
And there will always be plenty of opportunity
for being tempted to be offended with the
Lord.
The Lord sent no word of rebuke to
poor John the Baptist in the prison when
he was perilously near to being offended with
the Lord because of his situation.
The Lord was not hard on John because
of his question.
He might, had he been another, have said,
but John, did you not point me out
as the Lamb of God?
Did you not proclaim me as the one,
the Messiah?
Hadn't you preached about me to multitudes?
Have you not made the strongest declarations and
affirmations as to what you believed about me?
And here you are asking a fundamental question
about me.
John, what's gone wrong with you?
No, nothing like that.
The Lord knows our frame, we are thus.
The Lord, I am saying, takes account of
this ever-present possibility in our weakness of
being offended with him.
But he does attach to this matter a
particular blessedness if we don't crash over this
stumbling block of his ways with us.
And, blessed is he whosoever shall not be
offended in me.
There's the possibility.
Then, as to the reasons for the possibility,
I've read that old story of Elijah and
Elisha, for one purpose only, just to get
at one thing which is so common in
our experience.
No new thought, it's often being mentioned here,
but note it again.
It's a strange story that, isn't it?
Strange behavior of Elijah.
It did seem that Elijah was trying to
put off Elisha.
If you like to reject him, again and
again he said, you stay here.
The Lord has sent me.
So and so.
You stay here.
On the face of it, it looked as
though he was being rejected.
Put aside.
Not wanted.
Just not wanted.
And Elisha, had he been, what some of
us are, he said, oh well, if you
don't want me then, all right, I'll stay
here.
I'll not go any further.
Quite evident.
You have no place for me anymore.
No room for me.
I don't count.
All right.
Well, sorry, but, you see that's pink.
That's being offended.
Doesn't it often look like that with the
Lord?
So often, the ways of the Lord with
us could be interpreted in that manner.
The Lord doesn't seem to want us.
He's no longer any interest in us.
Indeed, he is relegating us to the place
of the rejected.
Seems that he is prepared to go on
without us.
We are not wanted.
That's what it amounts to.
We are not wanted.
The Lord doesn't want us.
You ever interpreted his ways like that?
That's a form of offendedness or stumbling of
the Lord, isn't it?
Coming down by the strangeness of the Lord's
seeming willingness to do without us.
To go on without us.
To set us aside.
Of course, that's not all the story of
Elijah and Elisha or Elisha and Elijah.
We'll touch it again lightly in a moment.
But there's one way in which we can
be offended with the Lord.
His seeming either loss or lack of interest
in us.
And concern, real concern to have us.
If we knew the truth about Elijah, he
was far more concerned to have Elijah than
he was to get rid of him.
But he wanted him on certain terms, on
the terms of a man who had demonstrated
that nothing else mattered in life than fellowship
with his Lord.
From that, he was not going to be
put off even by the Lord himself.
You like to translate the thing into relationship
with the Lord.
It would amount to this.
Lord, you may feel that you can do
without me but I can't do without you
and I'm not going to.
You've started this business and you've just got
to go on with it to the end.
I'm not going.
May it not be that that is something
of very great importance to the Lord in
the relationship of a servant who is going
to be useful to him.
He's proved that his Lord is, after all,
his life.
He can't be shaken off.
Think about that.
You have John the Baptist.
Here he is in prison.
How uttered John has been for the Lord.
How he has poured himself out in the
interest of Christ.
How devoted.
Behold the Lamb of God.
He it is of whom I said there
cometh one after me the lachet of whose
shoes I'm not worthy to undo.
He must increase.
I must decrease.
Here is devotion.
Devotion to his own abnegation.
And now he's in prison.
He's in prison.
His ministry is cut off.
His popularity suspended if not ended.
And in prison.
The Lord seems to be doing nothing about
it.
Nothing about it.
I think there's something in this that when
the Lord sent reply to John told him
of all the wonderful things that he was
doing in healing all manner of sicknesses even
to the raising of the dead did he
anticipate that if he'd stopped there John would
have said yes, but why doesn't he do
something for me?
I'm the lone one doing it for everybody
but not for me.
A lot of people are getting his blessing
and good but I am left out.
How easy it is to be offended when
we seem to be just the one person
who is overlooked.
And just at that point because perhaps the
Lord anticipated that that is how John might
have reacted and blessed is he that is
not offended in me.
Covered himself and perhaps helped John over his
difficult style.
The seeming indifference of the Lord and the
seeming favoritism or present or selectiveness of the
Lord.
He's blessing here and there this one and
that but he leaves me out.
Forgets me.
Or when you come to the letter to
the Hebrews pass not away your confidence which
hath great recompense of reward.
I'd stay with that word confidence just for
a moment.
As you see it's translated in the revised
version boldness.
Because it's the same word that is used
of Peter and John in Acts 4 when
they stood before the rulers charged with filling
all Jerusalem with their doctrine and they knew
they knew very well what kind of a
place Jerusalem was.
What they had done in Jerusalem to the
Lord Jesus the Spirit was there for their
destruction.
That they stood before those selfsame rulers and
it says about the rulers when they beheld
the boldness of Peter John.
That word boldness is the same word here
as in the authorized confidence and revised boldness.
What was it?
Their forthrightness their unreservedness their absence of uncertainty.
Here they are they're not wavering they're not
as we say speaking with their tongue in
their cheek as to what will happen to
them if they're not very careful what they
say.
Being politic diplomatic carefully choosing their words lest
they cause offense or being very careful because
they're not so sure of their ground.
The word here confidence or boldness is this
none of that they've got both their feet
solidly down.
They are speaking with assurance and confidence they
are forthright they are not reserving anything.
And to the Hebrews the word is cast
not away your downright forthrightness your certainty your
assurance your confidence cast it not away it
hath great recompense of reward.
Now you see that you have to read
the whole of this letter to the Hebrews
in the light of that phrase alone that
clause alone the whole context of this letter
is over against much that was gnawing at
the confidence of these Christians.
There was as we recently pointed out the
persecution.
The writer reminds them of their early days
when at their beginnings they suffered so great
a contradiction they suffered greatly at the beginning
for their faith.
Then they were confident bold assured that the
sufferings had increased.
Persecution the activities of the Judaizers to undermine
their confidence and faith in the Lord Jesus.
The long delayed return of the Lord which
they had been taught to expect at any
time all eating at their confidence.
These are some of the reasons for being
offended and you can add what you like
to them.
Probably find something in the word of God
which corresponds to anything that you like to
add.
There are plenty of grounds and reasons for
being offended.
If you're going to be at the divine
recompense and blessed is he that shall not
be made to stumble or who shall not
stumble be offended in me.
I ask you was Elisha justified in the
end in sticking to it?
Forgive me if that sounds vulgar.
Was he justified in sticking to it?
Shall we say to the bitter end?
No bitter end of course.
Of course Elisha had somehow a shrewd idea
of what was going to happen.
I know it.
He said I know it.
I know it.
Hold your peace.
But the point is that Elisha was not
going to let go without getting something out
of this for God.
Getting something out of this for God.
He was the Lord's servant.
He was Elisha's servant.
He had got to carry on the testimony.
Great weight of responsibility was going to rest
upon him.
Because of that, for that very reason he
was taken this testing away.
Could he?
Could he be put off?
Elisha teaches us a lesson so that we
might learn it and be of the same
spirit to hold on.
Cast not away your confidence which had great
recompense of reward.
Elisha found that to be true and came
into it.
His letter to the Hebrews lifts into view
something very great at the end of the
times of testing, doesn't it?
What for?
Receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken.
Or receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken.
And what you and I perhaps crave for
as much as anything in these days is
something that is substantial and unshakable and sure
and certain.
The rock.
We are shaken.
We are thrown about.
Everything is like that.
Often to wonder where we are.
Receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken.
Let us hold fast.
Let us hold fast the beginning of our
confidence from unto the end.
Cast not away your confidence.
Of course we ought never to speak of
things in the letter to the Hebrews without
seeing the full context.
Reminding ourselves of it.
The almost infinite difficulty of humans
as we are living a heavenly life and
walking a heavenly way on this earth.
It is so utterly contrary to our nature.
There is nothing in us by nature that
helps us to walk a heavenly way.
To have everything on a heavenly basis.
Nothing at all.
Everything is against that.
To come down to earth.
To have what we can see.
What is tangible.
What is present.
Our whole soul life wants it now.
And wants it in our hands.
Wants it as we can see it.
And all this heavenly way of the letter
to the Hebrews.
The heavenly way.
Partners in a heavenly calling.
It is unspeakably difficult to nature.
It is contrary to nature.
And we find all the way along almost
every day that this difficulty arises in some
form or another.
With all that we agree in our heart
of hearts that the heavenly is the real.
And it is the only object worth living
for.
We've got enough in our spiritual experience to
know that the heavenly is after all the
only thing for which to live.
Cast not away your confidence.
Which hath great reckonings of the Lord.
You have need of patience.
But having done the will of God you
may receive the promise.