CRYSTALLIZATION-STUDY OF FIRST AND SECOND KINGS
Message Three
Elisha Being a Type of Christ in His Ministry of Grace in Life and as a Man of God Behaving Himself as God's Representative, as the Acting God
Scripture Reading: 2 Kings 2:19-22; 4:1—6:7
I. Elisha is a type of Christ in doing miracles of grace in life—2 Kings 4:9; Luke 4:27:
A. In the fulfillment of the types and figures in the Old Testament, Christ is the real Elisha; as the real Elisha, the Lord Jesus is a sweet and pleasant prophet, a prophet of blessing—2 Kings 4:9; Luke 4:27; 7:11-17.
B. Elisha is a type in the Old Testament who represented God's New Testament economy in grace:
1. Grace is God doing everything for us by giving Himself to us as our enjoyment—John 1:1, 14-17.
2. This grace issues in the divine life, which is rich and high, even unto making us co-kings with Christ—Rom. 5:17.
C. The significance of the miracle performed by Elisha in healing the water at Jericho and of the miracle performed by the Lord Jesus in changing water into wine is the same—the changing of death into life—2 Kings 2:4, 19-22; John 2:1-11.
D. Elisha's calling things not being as being was the same thing in principle that the Lord Jesus did when He fed the multitudes—2 Kings 4:1-7, 8-17, 42-44; Matt. 14:14-21; 15:32-39.
E. Elisha's resurrecting the dead from death, giving life to the dead, is the same as what the Lord Jesus did, both physically and spiritually—2 Kings 4:18-37; Luke 7:11-17; John 11:41-44; 5:25.
F. Elisha's nullifying the poison of the wild gourds with flour is the same in principle as the Lord Jesus' healing His disciples of the leaven of the Pharisees with Himself as the fine flour—2 Kings 4:41; Matt. 16:12.
G. Elisha's causing an axe head that had fallen into the water to float by means of a wooden stick signifies Christ's recovering through His cross in resurrection the lost power of sinners that had fallen into the death water—2 Kings 6:6; Eph. 2:1-6.
H. Elisha performed miracles of divine healing for others, but, in the will of God, he himself was not healed by a miracle; this was the experience of Paul and his fellow workers—2 Kings 13:14:
1. Paul left Trophimus at Miletus in sickness without exercising healing prayer for him and did not exercise his healing gift to cure Timothy of his stomach sickness—2 Tim. 4:20; 1 Tim. 5:23; Acts 19:11-12.
2. Paul and his co-workers were under the discipline of the inner life in that time of suffering rather than under the power of the outward gift:
a. The former is a matter of grace in life; the latter is a matter of gift in power—miraculous power.
b. In the decline of the church and in one's suffering for the church, the gift of power is not needed as much as the grace in life—2 Tim. 4:22.
I. Elisha was deceased in his body yet still ministered in the spirit to enliven one of the dead—2 Kings 13:21:
1. Even the dead Elisha could enliven people.
2. This is a picture of Christ in resurrection—John 11:25; Acts 2:24; Phil. 3:10:
a. Whoever touches Him is enlivened.
b. Regeneration involves a spiritually dead person touching the dead and resurrected Christ and being enlivened—cf. John 5:25; Eph. 2:1-6a.
II. Like Moses, Samuel, and Paul, Elisha, a man of God, behaved as God's representative, as the acting God, on the earth—2 Kings 4:9:
A. Jehovah told Moses that He had made him God to Pharaoh—Exo. 7:1a:
1. In Moses God had one to represent Him and to execute His will; Moses never spoke to Pharaoh on his own but always spoke what the Lord had told him to say—3:16-18; 5:1.
2. Actually, Pharaoh was not listening to Moses, God's ambassador, and dealing with him; he was listening to God and dealing with God.
B. Samuel was the representative of God to rule over His people on earth; as such, Samuel was the acting God—1 Sam. 1:11; 2:35; 7:3; 8:22:
1. Samuel could be the acting God because his being and God's heart were one—2:35:
a. He was a man according to God's heart; that is, he was a copy, a duplicate, of God's heart.
b. Samuel's living and working were for the carrying out of whatever was in God's heart.
2. Samuel was God's oracle and God's administration, and thus, he was the acting God.
C. In his ministry Paul, a man of God, was the acting God in comforting the believers, in conducting himself in the simplicity of God, in expressing the jealousy of God, and in being an ambassador of Christ to carry out the ministry of reconciliation—2 Cor. 1:3-4, 12; 11:2; 5:20:
1. All during the apostle Paul's long and unfortunate imprisonment-voyage, the Lord kept him in His ascendancy and enabled him to live a life far beyond the realm of anxiety—Acts 27:13—28:9:
a. This life was fully dignified, with the highest standard of human virtues expressing the most excellent divine attributes, a life that resembled the one that the Lord Jesus Himself had lived on the earth years before.
b. This was Jesus living again on earth in His divinely enriched humanity.
c. This was the wonderful, excellent, and mysterious Godman, who lived in the Gospels, continuing to live in the Acts through one of His many members.
2. The New Testament believers can be the same as Paul in functioning as the acting God—1 Tim. 1:16.
III. As God's chosen, redeemed, and regenerated people who are one with God, who are constituted with God, who live God, who express God, who move with God, and who represent God, we may function as the acting God—Eph. 1:4-5:
A. As God's chosen, redeemed, and regenerated people, we should be one with God—1 Cor. 6:17:
1. The basic principle of the Bible is that in His economy God is making Himself one with man and is making man one with Him—John 15:4.
2. God desires that the divine life and the human life be joined together to become one life that has one living—1 Cor. 6:17.
B. We need to be constituted with God—Eph. 3:17a; Col. 3:10-11:
1. God's economy is to dispense Himself into our being so that our being may be constituted with His being to be one constitution with His being—Eph. 3:17a; 4:4-6.
2. In the divine life and by the working of the law of the divine life, God will be wrought into us, and we will be constituted with Him in His life and nature—Rom. 8:2, 6, 10-11, 29.
C. As those who are one with God and constituted with God, we should live God—Phil. 1:21a:
1. According to His economy, God's intention is to impart His element, His substance, and the ingredients of His nature into our being so that we may live Him—Rom. 8:2, 6, 10-11.
2. Our daily life should actually be God Himself and thus be a life of constantly living God—1 Thes. 2:12; 1 Cor. 10:31.
D. We should express God—Gen. 1:26; 2 Cor. 3:18; Rom. 8:29; Col. 3:10:
1. God's eternal purpose is to work Himself into us as our life so that we may express Him—Eph. 1:11; 3:11; 2 Tim. 1:9.
2. God's aim in His economy is that we would be one with Him and live Him for His corporate expression—1 Cor. 6:17; Phil. 1:21a; Eph. 1:22-23.
E. As those who express God, we should move with God—Josh. 1:1-9; 6:1-16:
1. God needed the children of Israel to cooperate with Him in His move in His economy as the great wheel—1:1-9; 6:1-16.
2. We need to be one with God in His heart's desire and in His move on earth—Eph. 1:5, 9; Rev. 14:1-4.
F. As we move with God, we should represent God—Gen. 1:26-28: 1 In order to represent God with authority, we must express God in life; because Aaron had the resurrection life to express God, he had the authority to represent God—v. 26; 2:9; Num. 17:1-8.
2. The proper way to work for God is to represent God—Exo. 7:1-2.
G. If we are one with God, constituted with God, live God, express God, move with God, and represent God, we can function as the acting God:
1. God is able to make us the same as He is in life, nature, expression, and function to carry out His economy—Col. 3:4; 2 Pet. 1:4; Eph. 3:9.
2. In his ministry Elisha the prophet, as a man of God, behaved himself as God's representative, as the acting God; today we, the believers in Christ, can be the same, functioning in His economy as the acting God—2 Kings 4:9; 1 Tim. 6:11; 2 Tim. 3:17.